Oh No! My MacBook Pro is going crazy!

Hello Folks,

I bought a brand new MBP at the end of June, things were going sorta well. I had the odd beach ball every now and then but it never lasted to be annoying or indicate serious trouble!

Then yesterday, I plugged my MBP to charge it and noticed the charger isn't turning orange like it is supposed to, also, it said that the battery is "Not Charging". Unplugged, replugged and life with back to normal.

Come today, I forgot to plug it in and the battery was completely drained (no big deal right?) I plugged it in, and MBP powers back on. This time though, it was stuck at 1% and not charging. iStat said it had 638hrs till full charge (WHAT??!!) and then the fans kicked into high gear like there was **** burning within the chassis.

I ended up turning everything off, plugging it and let it be for a while. Now, it's up and running again, charging.

I set up an appointment with the Genius Bar and we'll find out what they say

I am very disappointed at this.

Do y'all have any suggestions?!

Let me know.

Cheers.

I would just take it into Apple like you are planning. For a machine that new, let them sort it out. That is not normal at all.

Do let us know what they find. Good Luck!

WOW thats not so good on any PC let alone one that in only a Month old .. . . . . BC of those problems i dare say there is more to than a simple fix but all i could suggest is try Resetting PRAM and NVRAM and the SMC . . .

Good luck and let us know ow it goes . .

Cheers

Hello y'all

Sorry for the late update, but I wanted to have more data for ya.

I went to the Apple store and as expected my MBP was behaving like it should with no issues. The Genius reset the usual stuff, he said sometimes the Power Management get corrupt and resetting is takes care of it.

Now, a couple of weeks later the problem is back and I think I found an interesting source!!!

Get this:

Everything is good and charging with no issues no overheating and then fans kick in high gear, I rebooted and reset the PRAM, NVRAM and SMC and it seemed like we are ok.

Then I started Chrome, which remembered my tab of Netflix where I was watching a show, as soon as it started playing the overheating came back. and the battery wasn't charging!!!

Close that one particular tab... back to normal.

Very reproducible and yet very bizzare!! Any ideas, has anyone seen this before?!

ok, one more update!

It seems like the problem is easily replicated with Google Chrome, but with Safari and running the same movie through Netflix everything seems normal... what the ****?!!

doesn't make sense, not one bit!

One more

I went to silverlight.net and played one of their "tour" videos. This One

In chrome, this goes nuts. In safari, no issues what so ever!

Well I think you have your answer then. Dump Chrome.

chas_m said:

Well I think you have your answer then. Dump Chrome.

Click to expand...

I am guessing someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today?!

Anyone else, with a bit more useful advice?

MinaMACMan said:

One more

I went to silverlight.net and played one of their "tour" videos. This One

In chrome, this goes nuts. In safari, no issues what so ever!

Click to expand...

By going nuts, what does it do? Overheat? What is showing in Activity Monitor on Chrome when that happens?

And to Chas, Ditching Chrome is not the answer here. Many use it and don't have this issue, so I feel it's something with Mina's machine somehow. Not sure what. I am a Safari fan also but Chrome does not do that here that I have ever seen.

Hey dtravis,

when I say it goes nuts:

The battery stops charging. Fans kick into high gear. Magsafe LED turns to green from orange.

Also, if I am plugged in but the battery is already at 100% this doesn't happen. Somehow this only manifest with the following combo:

Chrome, Streaming anything with SilverLight, and charging all at the same time.

If I am running on the battery non of that happens.

Just out of curiosity have you upgraded to Lion or are you still running SL?

What is bothering me about this is that Apple could not duplicate it and fix it. That Machine is almost brand new and should not be doing that.

Is anyone with a new MBP here using Chrome? If so could you try his URL's and report back? This really sounds like some hardware issue, but I am at a loss why it's only doing it in Chrome. I would do some testing here but I have no Intel Mac Notebook and just the iMac.

MinaMACMan said:

Hey dtravis,

when I say it goes nuts:

The battery stops charging. Fans kick into high gear. Magsafe LED turns to green from orange.

Also, if I am plugged in but the battery is already at 100% this doesn't happen. Somehow this only manifest with the following combo:

Chrome, Streaming anything with SilverLight, and charging all at the same time.

If I am running on the battery non of that happens.

Click to expand...

Chromes obviously over-utilizing your processor when running silverlight. This causes the processor to heat up (your fans kicking onto high), electrical draw to increase (your battery issue). So the culprit is, indeed, chrome. They need to address this with their code more than likely. I'd report it it. Or perhaps uninstall it, reinstall it and see if that's a solution.

Still hanging out with the Snow Leopard. I had a couple of software conflicts with Lion (now resolved) but I decided to wait till I get through my finals this Friday before I upgrade. I get the upgrade for free anyways, since I bought my MBP less than a month ago.

btw, the other thing you should do is create a new user account and see if it duplicates on that account.

dtravis7 said:

What is bothering me about this is that Apple could not duplicate it and fix it. That Machine is almost brand new and should not be doing that.

Is anyone with a new MBP here using Chrome? If so could you try his URL's and report back? This really sounds like some hardware issue, but I am at a loss why it's only doing it in Chrome. I would do some testing here but I have no Intel Mac Notebook and just the iMac.

Click to expand...

dt, I actually never realized the link between SilverLight, Chrome and this issue until yesterday. When I went to the Apple Store I didn't know that. So this one is one me not the Genius. Now that I know, the last time this happened I was streaming my Class Lecture through Chrome and they use SilverLight at Stanford!

If someone can give it a shot and report back that would indeed be wonderful.

Dysfunction said:

Chromes obviously over-utilizing your processor when running silverlight. This causes the processor to heat up (your fans kicking onto high), electrical draw to increase (your battery issue). So the culprit is, indeed, chrome. They need to address this with their code more than likely. I'd report it it. Or perhaps uninstall it, reinstall it and see if that's a solution.

Click to expand...

Agreed. In the Activity Monitor, when I stream the same video from Chrome vs Safari I get 24-28% CPU usage from Chrome vs barely 10-12% from Safari.

In all honesty, I don't think it's Chrome. I think it's SilverLight in specific. Because I can stream Flash all day and nothing like this happens.

A quick google search for 'chrome mac high cpu utilization' shows 17,000,000 returns

If you can run the same thing in another browser (which is also using silverlight), it's not silverlight. It's the interaction with the browser, which really is controlled by the browser (in general)

MinaMACMan said:

In all honesty, I don't think it's Chrome. I think it's SilverLight in specific. Because I can stream Flash all day and nothing like this happens.

Click to expand...

That was why I was waiting for you to answer Brian's question which you did. If you were running Lion, I would suspect Silverlight was not properly written for Lion as yet, or Chrome for that matter.

Just for kicks, I downloaded FireFox... everything works normal there. So it definitely seems like the interaction of Chrome and SilverLight.

Maybe the Microsoft conspiracy to screw with El Goog is real... aah, the plot thickens.