A portend of problems?

I've got a mid 2010 MPB with 8 GB of memory. It runs well and has never had any serious problems that I couldn't resolve. I generally use it like a desktop with a magic mouse and a external monitor. The other night i was playing a game when the system shut down.

The screen went black; I got the no signal notice, and I noticed the computer had shut itself off. I rebooted--it took longer than usual--and notice that the power adaptor was orange indicating it was charging the battery. I clicked on the battery icon on the menu bar to display the percentage of charge and it showed 4 percent. I've got a UPS and it had not engaged. I shut down the system and went to bed.

The next morning when I booted up the system ran fine and the battery icon showed a full charge. No problems since. Does anyone have an idea as to what caused the shut down and why the battery was so low? Does this portend a looming problem such as a battery going out. I'm pretty good about exercising the battery--taking it down to near zero and recharging on a fairly regular basis. Any ideas?

The reason the reboot took longer than normal was because it was repairing itself.

It sounds like the power failed or came loose so you were playing on battery. The game probably hid the "reserve power" warning (they often do in full-screen). The UPS may not be working correctly or may be dead (they do die over time).

There could be other possible factors but I'd say to run OnyX or at least Disk Utility and then don't worry about it unless it happens again.

MrTutt said:

Does anyone have an idea as to what caused the shut down and why the battery was so low? Does this portend a looming problem such as a battery going out. I'm pretty good about exercising the battery--taking it down to near zero and recharging on a fairly regular basis. Any ideas?

Click to expand...

Hi,

Lithium batteries will get very stressed and wear out more quickly if you constantly charge them from the red-zone or beyond.You should only really run it down very very infrequently if you need to re-calibrate the battery so that the battery stats and meter stay refreshed.

In general, either keep it plugged in, or recharge from smaller depths of discharge for example 20% DoD (or 80% capacity), to keep the lithium ions moving. It will be far happier just tickling along being topped up frequently.

There are several stages to the battery charge cycle and Stage 1 is the more aggressive constant current charge initiated by flat or near zero capacity conditions before the process can settle down into the saturation charge and beyond.

Regards,
Liam

Thanks for the help and suggestions.

MrTutt