My battery icon in an X

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Level 1

0 points

My battery icon in an X

So for a while my battery has been saying 'Service Battery' when you click on it and has slowly started holding less and less charge and taking more time to start up but now the battery icon is just an 'X' symbol, no percentige given and says 'No Battery Available' when clicked on. I've been meaning to replace it for a while but I've been told that because batteries are classed as consumables they're not covered by Apple Care (which has ran out now anyway) and I'd have to pay the £100+ for a new one to replace it (not even sure if they can do this in the Genius bar or not, anyone know?). My computer turned on by itself (no power supply) I noticed it and connected a power supply and that's lit up which from what I've read of other people similar problems their charging light didn't come on.

Can anyone help me with it, how to get the battery percentage back until I can atleast replace it?, why would it have randomly gone like this when about 7 hours ago it was 'fine', showing the charged battery like normal?, now it's showing this will it somehow be harmful to my computer in anyway like the battery isn't leaking or anything is it?

Thanks 🙂

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Nov 19, 2013 6:12 AM

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Answer 1

dominic23

Level 10

83,916 points

Nov 19, 2013 8:52 AM in response to Andy-N

OS X Lion: If an X appears on the battery icon in the menu bar:

Your Mac may need a new battery.

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4262

Try resetting SMC.

Reset SMC. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

Choose the method for:

"Resetting SMC on portables with a battery you should not remove on your own".

If this does not help, contact Apple.

Best.

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Answer 2

crxpo

Level 1

0 points

Apr 23, 2015 7:06 AM in response to dominic23

I had the same issue and went through all the resets and it helped temporally, but after about 20 min or so, or qhenever i would open the lid on the mbp the x would be back and the computer would get absurdly slow. unable to keep trace on a mouse pointer slow... i had another MBP laying around and i thought i'd swap out the batteries since i needed to finish some work on the MBP with the x-battery-issue. when i opened the back of said MBP up i noticed the two screw loops that hold the battery in place had broken off for some reason and the battery developed a little play in the chassis. I basically made a shim out of some stiff paper and aluminum foil and wedged the battery in place in such a way that there was no longer any play. The area to look at is highlighted in the photo. after screwing everything back together and everything seems to be fine with normal use.

Hope this helps

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