MacBook Pro Battery Problems

[Matt Garvey]

My macbook pro (late 2009) was telling me for a year that the battery needed to be replaced even though the charge cycles were rather low. I took it in to apple and asked about it off-hand and they said not to worry about it. The other day the battery quit all together and the mac will now only run when plugged into an outlet. The battery is not recognized at all (small X in the battery window) and in system report, hardware details there is no battery recognized at all. I have tried replacing it with another battery, but it was not recognized either. I have tried resetting everything in every way, reinstalling the factory battery, installing a new battery, and letting it sit unplugged for days but to no avail. Still the same problem. Could the battery connector on the logic board have gone bad? Maybe two dud batteries? What could it be?

 

[honestone]

Matt,

Man, that is a strange one! I did a google search of "Battery on 2009 MacBook Pro not recognized", and first, here is a link to all of the results (some may not be directly applicable):

https://www.google.com/search?q=Bat...la:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

Next, when I clicked on the second one from that list, and clicked the second link on the second post on that link, here is what I got:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1446?viewlocale=en_US

By the way, according to that link, MacBook Pro models early 2009 and later have built-in batteries, and should only be replaced by either an Apple Authorized Service Provider, or at THe Apple Atore.

In any event, from there, clicking on the "My battery is not recognized" link from that page, I got:

"My battery is not recognized
If the battery in your MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro is fully drained of power, the battery will put itself into a low power state to preserve its ability to charge in the future. Connect your Mac Notebook to AC power and allow it to charge for at least five minutes. If the connect to power screen persists after charging for five minutes, reset the SMC."

Finally, I clicked on that "SMC" link, and here is the resulting link for that:

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

By the way, from the link https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3685555?tstart=0, it looks like resetting the SMC did work.

Good luck!