In October, I opened up a MacBook Pro (Intel, 2017) to give clean out some of the dust inside. To my dismay, it wouldn't start up again afterwards. It was starting to show signs of its age and it was duly replaced, but I'd hoped it would hang around for a bit longer.

I tried every possible kind of reset, including disconnecting the battery and other components that might conceivably interfere with a start-up.

I couldn't do anything to get it up and again, and the Apple Store declared it completely dead.

A couple of weeks ago, on a whim I plugged it in and to my surprise it went bong. I shut it down and put the SSD back in; I couldn't get it started again. After some further protracted messing around with PRAM resets etc, I got it to start up again, but only once.

Yesterday, I tried once more, and it's as if it had never gone away. Now I can't make it *not* start up, however much I abuse it.

Very odd.

Daniele

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On 14 Jun 2024 at 22:48:36 BST, "Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

D.M. Procida <daniele-at-vurt-dot-org@invalid.com> wrote:

In October, I opened up a MacBook Pro (Intel, 2017) to give clean out some of
the dust inside. To my dismay, it wouldn't start up again afterwards. It was >> starting to show signs of its age and it was duly replaced, but I'd hoped it >> would hang around for a bit longer.

I tried every possible kind of reset, including disconnecting the battery and
other components that might conceivably interfere with a start-up.

I couldn't do anything to get it up and again, and the Apple Store declared it
completely dead.

A couple of weeks ago, on a whim I plugged it in and to my surprise it went >> bong. I shut it down and put the SSD back in; I couldn't get it started again.
After some further protracted messing around with PRAM resets etc, I got it to
start up again, but only once.

Yesterday, I tried once more, and it's as if it had never gone away. Now I >> can't make it *not* start up, however much I abuse it.

Intel Macs aren't the same but they also have an EC (the SMC) and it's possible it went into a sulk. Doing an SMC reset (not a PRAM reset, which
is mostly for the OS and bootloader) is supposed to fix it if it gets stuck, but perhaps something like a flat CMOS battery (or a very flat main battery) would cause weird symptoms like that, I don't know.

In this case, it felt that it needed to go completely flat in order to reset itself. SMC resets (or attempted SMC resets, I have no idea whether what I was doing actually reset anything) had no effect.

Weird 'powers on three times out of ten' symptoms can also be due to electrolytic capacitor ageing, but that's more likely to be capacitors in power supplies (ie the power brick) than the laptop. I trust you tried a different power brick?

I tried all kinds of power sources.

Daniele

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D.M. Procida <daniele-at-vurt-dot-org@invalid.com> wrote:

In October, I opened up a MacBook Pro (Intel, 2017) to give clean out some of the dust inside. To my dismay, it wouldn't start up again afterwards. It was starting to show signs of its age and it was duly replaced, but I'd hoped it would hang around for a bit longer.

I tried every possible kind of reset, including disconnecting the battery and other components that might conceivably interfere with a start-up.

I couldn't do anything to get it up and again, and the Apple Store declared it
completely dead.

A couple of weeks ago, on a whim I plugged it in and to my surprise it went bong. I shut it down and put the SSD back in; I couldn't get it started again.
After some further protracted messing around with PRAM resets etc, I got it to
start up again, but only once.

Yesterday, I tried once more, and it's as if it had never gone away. Now I can't make it *not* start up, however much I abuse it.

I've had this kind of weird stuff happen on Dell laptops when the CMOS
battery went flat - sometimes they completely refused to charge and refused
to turn on, no signs of life whatever. Charging them for 24 hours was
enough to trickle charge the CMOS battery back to life, to let them boot,
and only then charge the main battery (once CMOS settings have been reset). Basically the embedded controller refuses to power up the laptop because
it's not happy, and no power up means a dead machine. (Some laptops have non-rechargeable CMOS batteries so those need physical replacement).

Intel Macs aren't the same but they also have an EC (the SMC) and it's
possible it went into a sulk. Doing an SMC reset (not a PRAM reset, which
is mostly for the OS and bootloader) is supposed to fix it if it gets stuck, but perhaps something like a flat CMOS battery (or a very flat main battery) would cause weird symptoms like that, I don't know.

Weird 'powers on three times out of ten' symptoms can also be due to electrolytic capacitor ageing, but that's more likely to be capacitors in
power supplies (ie the power brick) than the laptop. I trust you tried a different power brick?

Theo

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D.M. Procida <daniele-at-vurt-dot-org@invalid.com> wrote:

On 14 Jun 2024 at 22:48:36 BST, "Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

D.M. Procida <daniele-at-vurt-dot-org@invalid.com> wrote: > In October,
I opened up a MacBook Pro (Intel, 2017) to give clean out some of > the >dust inside. To my dismay, it wouldn't start up again afterwards. It was

starting to show signs of its age and it was duly replaced, but I'd

hoped it > would hang around for a bit longer. > > I tried every possible >kind of reset, including disconnecting the battery and > other components >that might conceivably interfere with a start-up. > > I couldn't do >anything to get it up and again, and the Apple Store declared it > >completely dead. > > A couple of weeks ago, on a whim I plugged it in and >to my surprise it went > bong. I shut it down and put the SSD back in; I >couldn't get it started again. > After some further protracted messing >around with PRAM resets etc, I got it to > start up again, but only once.

Yesterday, I tried once more, and it's as if it had never gone away. >Now I > can't make it *not* start up, however much I abuse it.

Intel Macs aren't the same but they also have an EC (the SMC) and it's possible it went into a sulk. Doing an SMC reset (not a PRAM reset, which is mostly for the OS and bootloader) is supposed to fix it if it gets stuck,
but perhaps something like a flat CMOS battery (or a very flat main battery)
would cause weird symptoms like that, I don't know.

In this case, it felt that it needed to go completely flat in order to reset itself. SMC resets (or attempted SMC resets, I have no idea whether what I was
doing actually reset anything) had no effect.

Weird 'powers on three times out of ten' symptoms can also be due to electrolytic capacitor ageing, but that's more likely to be capacitors in power supplies (ie the power brick) than the laptop. I trust you tried a different power brick?

I tried all kinds of power sources.

A trick with the LC475 was to simply plug it in to mains power for ten
minutes before trying to boot it. That charged the flat (and
theoretically non-rechargeable) memory battery just enought to get it
started.


--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

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D.M. Procida <daniele-at-vurt-dot-org@invalid.com> wrote:

On 14 Jun 2024 at 22:48:36 BST, "Theo" <theom+news@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

D.M. Procida <daniele-at-vurt-dot-org@invalid.com> wrote:

In October, I opened up a MacBook Pro (Intel, 2017) to give clean out some of
the dust inside. To my dismay, it wouldn't start up again afterwards. It was
starting to show signs of its age and it was duly replaced, but I'd hoped it
would hang around for a bit longer.

I tried every possible kind of reset, including disconnecting the battery and
other components that might conceivably interfere with a start-up.

I couldn't do anything to get it up and again, and the Apple Store declared it
completely dead.

A couple of weeks ago, on a whim I plugged it in and to my surprise it went >>> bong. I shut it down and put the SSD back in; I couldn't get it started again.
After some further protracted messing around with PRAM resets etc, I got it to
start up again, but only once.

Yesterday, I tried once more, and it's as if it had never gone away. Now I >>> can't make it *not* start up, however much I abuse it.

Intel Macs aren't the same but they also have an EC (the SMC) and it's
possible it went into a sulk. Doing an SMC reset (not a PRAM reset, which >> is mostly for the OS and bootloader) is supposed to fix it if it gets stuck, >> but perhaps something like a flat CMOS battery (or a very flat main battery) >> would cause weird symptoms like that, I don't know.

In this case, it felt that it needed to go completely flat in order to reset itself. SMC resets (or attempted SMC resets, I have no idea whether what I was
doing actually reset anything) had no effect.

Weird 'powers on three times out of ten' symptoms can also be due to
electrolytic capacitor ageing, but that's more likely to be capacitors in
power supplies (ie the power brick) than the laptop. I trust you tried a
different power brick?

I tried all kinds of power sources.

Seems to be something strange with this particular MBP perhaps.

My daughter passed down her MBP 2017 to me last year, which I just used to replace my old iMac 2013 as a HDD backup device. As such it just sits on a
a desk, and never gets moved (I use my iPad Pro as my main mobile device).

I know she’d lost the original PSU, and was probably using it with an underpowered replacement. It hammered the battery a bit, and gave her all
sorts of issues, so she replaced the MBP with a newer one.

When I got it, it was showing ‘service battery’ status, with orange warnings. I had intended to get the battery replaced. However, I got a more powerful PSU, which was able to power the MBP fully. After a few weeks, I noticed that the warning had disappeared, and Coconut Battery was showing a green bar. On rechecking, the Apple status was also shown ‘good’ in the battery data.

Seems that given time, the macOS system had managed to switch the battery
into a ‘desktop’ mode, and had recovered it sufficiently to revert the service warnings. It now runs in a ‘managed’ mode, and has been quite stable since.

I’m also running it pretty well under OCLP with Sonoma.

So, maybe try just plugging in a decent PSU (i.e with enough power to run
the MBP on), and see if it manages to settle down on its own if left alone
for a while.

--
Andy H

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D.M. Procida wrote:

[snip]

Interesting and unexpected, I would have thought a lower-powered PSU (as long as it kept it charging, even while in use) would be *less* hard on a battery, as it would gently trickle-charge it rather than subjecting it to greater electrical/chemical shock.

+1

Possibly the OP's success came from leaving the power connected even
when the computer was shut down.

--
Graham J

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On 18 Jun 2024 at 09:20:27 BST, "Andy H" <thewildrover@icloud.com> wrote:

I know she’d lost the original PSU, and was probably using it with an underpowered replacement. It hammered the battery a bit, and gave her all sorts of issues, so she replaced the MBP with a newer one.

When I got it, it was showing ‘service battery’ status, with orange warnings. I had intended to get the battery replaced. However, I got a more powerful PSU, which was able to power the MBP fully. After a few weeks, I noticed that the warning had disappeared, and Coconut Battery was showing a green bar. On rechecking, the Apple status was also shown ‘good’ in the battery data.

Seems that given time, the macOS system had managed to switch the battery into a ‘desktop’ mode, and had recovered it sufficiently to revert the service warnings. It now runs in a ‘managed’ mode, and has been quite stable since.

Interesting and unexpected, I would have thought a lower-powered PSU (as long as it kept it charging, even while in use) would be *less* hard on a battery, as it would gently trickle-charge it rather than subjecting it to greater electrical/chemical shock.

Daniele

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D.M. Procida <daniele-at-vurt-dot-org@invalid.com> wrote:

On 18 Jun 2024 at 09:20:27 BST, "Andy H" <thewildrover@icloud.com> wrote:

I know she’d lost the original PSU, and was probably using it with an underpowered replacement. It hammered the battery a bit, and gave her all sorts of issues, so she replaced the MBP with a newer one.

When I got it, it was showing ‘service battery’ status, with orange warnings. I had intended to get the battery replaced. However, I got a more powerful PSU, which was able to power the MBP fully. After a few weeks, I noticed that the warning had disappeared, and Coconut Battery was showing a green bar. On rechecking, the Apple status was also shown ‘good’ in the battery data.

Seems that given time, the macOS system had managed to switch the battery into a ‘desktop’ mode, and had recovered it sufficiently to revert the service warnings. It now runs in a ‘managed’ mode, and has been quite stable since.

Interesting and unexpected, I would have thought a lower-powered PSU (as long as it kept it charging, even while in use) would be *less* hard on a battery, as it would gently trickle-charge it rather than subjecting it to greater electrical/chemical shock.

Not necessarily. If the laptop is taking all the power to run, it may have little power remaining to charge the battery very much. A larger charger
has more headroom to put more charge into the battery.

Also, some forms of USB-PD may be limited by a lazy charger. eg I have a
130W Dell USB-C charger that only provides 5V@6.5A and 20V@6.5A - it doesn't
do the full USB-PD spec so skips the usual 9V and 15V outputs. Result is
that phones charge slowly, as their fast charging relies on the 9V or 15V output. Fit a smaller USB-PD charger (eg 45W=15V@3A) and the phone charges faster.

Theo

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On 18/06/2024 11:29, D.M. Procida wrote:

On 18 Jun 2024 at 09:20:27 BST, "Andy H" <thewildrover@icloud.com> wrote:

I know she’d lost the original PSU, and was probably using it with an
underpowered replacement. It hammered the battery a bit, and gave her all
sorts of issues, so she replaced the MBP with a newer one.

When I got it, it was showing ‘service battery’ status, with orange
warnings. I had intended to get the battery replaced. However, I got a more >> powerful PSU, which was able to power the MBP fully. After a few weeks, I
noticed that the warning had disappeared, and Coconut Battery was showing a >> green bar. On rechecking, the Apple status was also shown ‘good’ in the >> battery data.

Seems that given time, the macOS system had managed to switch the battery
into a ‘desktop’ mode, and had recovered it sufficiently to revert the >> service warnings. It now runs in a ‘managed’ mode, and has been quite
stable since.

Interesting and unexpected, I would have thought a lower-powered PSU (as long as it kept it charging, even while in use) would be *less* hard on a battery, as it would gently trickle-charge it rather than subjecting it to greater electrical/chemical shock.

I think that was the problem, it wasn't enough to power the MacBook and
keep the charge topped up, so it was draining the battery when the MBP
in use. She does use here laptop a lot, and was frequently having to
stop work to let it charge up again. I think she ran it down to 0 a lot (working until it shutdown), so it was abused for sure.

I've got in a 65W PSU, and the MBP needs 55W to run (according to coconutBattery), so I just leave it plugged in. For me, I use it
lightly, so never push it too hard. macOS is managing it at around 80%
charge.

--
Andy H

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