Q: MacBook Pro sporadically doesn't charge until restart
Hi everybody, first post here but I couldn't find this issue elsewhere. If so, sorry for the double post.
I have an Early 2011 Macbook Pro 13" which I love dearly. Sometimes it acts up, like in the case described here. About two years ago, when on holiday in Berlin, my Mac wouldn't charge anymore. It was already pretty late and I don't speak German, so I went to sleep and next morning I ran to the first independant (but certified, ofc) Mac-repair shop I could find. The guy tried my Mac with another charger, worked fine. He plugged my charger into another Mac, again, green light. Lastly, he plugged my charger into my own Mac and, wonderful surprise, it worked!
Now this has been happening to me about once or twice a year since. Charger stops working, I unplug everything, let my Mac power down, go to sleep and the next morning it charges like a sweetie. Problem is, it happened twice this month. First time I let it power down and tried my fix again, it worked. Now it happened again yesterday, I decided not to let it power down but give the MagSafe charger a rest. Today, no success, no light, no charge, no nothing. I fiddled a bit and cleaned the adapter and the Mac, no success. I shut it down and powered it up again and, sure enough, works like a charm (97% now).
Now I wouldn't mind buying a new charger (mine is 6 years old and pretty war-torn), but I'm not exactly sure if that would fix the problem. I had one other battery issue ("service battery" warning), which fixed itself after recalibration (power down to 0, wait an hour, power up when shut down and reset SMC to be on the safe side). Also, my trackpad acts erratic when pluged into the charger (unless I hold my palm down on the Mac). Coconut Battery tells me I have 87% design capacity, which sounds realistic given my battery life. Ow and I'm still running 10.7.5 at least until I upgrade my disk.
As I'm thinking about getting an SSD and some more RAM, I would like to sort this out before giving it an upgrade. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance!
MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.5)
Posted on Apr 11, 2016 11:51 AM

