mobimation
Level 1 (4 points)

Q: OSX: More robust handling of low battery hibernation

Hello I have often had problems with my Macbook Pro 13, the 2010 model if I use it until the battery goes out. OSX gives no warning but the screen just goes out. If I then rush to attach a charger  and the LED on the charger magsafe connector indicates charging rather quickly after the display went out it can suffice to just press the space bar and the machine will be up and running again. Nice !

 

But, if it takes longer until I have the charger in place, say 25 seconds it seems OSX has begun a deeper kind of hibernation process that is ongoing.

 

At that point in time with the charger attached and charging, if I press the Power button the screen will turn on white for some 20 seconds and finally the dreadful OSX reboot chime: the laptop has rebooted and forgets everything that was up on screen when the battery became too low.  A reboot will occur. That can be VERY irritating.

 

If I instead would wait some additional 20 seconds before I press the Power button the hibernated state will reload just fine and the Macbook is rather quickly back to the state it was in before the battery out situation got triggered.

 

Question:  It would be desirable if Apple could guard the system in this seemingly critical time window from where that hibernation begins until it is completed, so that a user pressing the power button will not interrupt the hibernation process.  The machine could instead pop up a message saying "Hibernation in process, please wait for power on..." instead of just destroying the save operation and rebooting.      Please Apple fix this.

 

Until you fix this in some OS upgrade (or BIOS upgrade ?)  I will have to remember to wait some 30 seconds before powering on the Macbook in that situation in order for not losing what is being hibernated !

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), Macbook Pro 13 2010 edition

Posted on Jul 17, 2014 10:42 AM

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Q: OSX: More robust handling of low battery hibernation

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  • by Loner T,

    Loner T Loner T Jul 17, 2014 10:47 AM in response to mobimation
    Level 7 (23,623 points)
    Safari
    Jul 17, 2014 10:47 AM in response to mobimation

    1. There is a warning for low battery.

    2. If you hear the dreaded reboot chime, the power button has been held down for too long. A light touch usually wakes up the device.

    3. If you see the '|||||' type white screen, the device went to sleep and saved state.

    4. You should check your Energy Saver settings on the Battery tab.

     

    Please see Mac notebooks: All about batteries

  • by mobimation,Helpful

    mobimation mobimation Jul 17, 2014 11:13 AM in response to Loner T
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jul 17, 2014 11:13 AM in response to Loner T

    Thanks Loner T, in the cases when this has happened the white screen is not restoring from hibernation but just shows a white screen for some 8 seconds then reboots with the chime.  The sense I get is that my pressing the Power button (maybe for half a second) is disturbing an ongoing hibernation save operation
    and causes the reboot. But my experience is if I just wait a bit longer until I press Power the hibernated data begins loading and the system is back on.

     

    Thanks, I will try other tactile ways than the power button in the described scenario to see if that makes a difference.
    I would assume the situation is likely associated with BIOS software rather than the OS itself. I had the same issue with earlier OSX versions as well.

     

    I will also see if there are settings that can give more intense reminders when the battery is about to go low.
    In my case that feature seem to somehow be turned off.

     

    I will also check if there could exist any BIOS upgrade that have addressed the issue.

     

     

    Regards,

    /gunnar

  • by Loner T,

    Loner T Loner T Jul 17, 2014 12:53 PM in response to mobimation
    Level 7 (23,623 points)
    Safari
    Jul 17, 2014 12:53 PM in response to mobimation

    You may also want to look at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5869