So I'm back from Australia and seeing as my Macbook got stolen when I was there my parents bought me a cheap replacement until I get myself on my feet. It's a 2006 Macbook 13" 1,1 Dual Core model. It does the strangest of things. Firstly it won't sleep, closing the lid won't do anything at all, choosing sleep from the Apple menu is equally useless. When left off over night the next day it won't start from the power button, you have to remove the battery and power cable and then plug the power cable back in, it will then start automatically, however it will fail, as in the CD drive will spin up for a quick second and then the screen will just switch off, sometimes it doesn't even get that far. Eventually it will boot (after taking the cable in and out about 20 times), at which point you can slip the battery back in. Once it's been running for about an hour you can shut it down, restart it and it will start from the power button running on either the battery or adapter. Every time I go through this process the Mac reports that the time has been reset to Jan 1 2001 and it'll have forgotten my preferred wireless network. I've had the machine completely to pieces and everything is connected properly, everything looks fine. I've done a battery firmware upgrade and EFI upgrade, I've done several SMC resets and PVRAM resets. I just can't figure out what's wrong with it. If it were a PC I'd say the bios battery needs changing but there's no such thing on a Mac as far as I'm aware. I know it's old but it's in great condition and when it's up and running it's nice to use, I can barely tell the difference between this and the Core 2 Duo I used to run. If anyone has any ideas, shoot them my way. BTW. I'm running 10.6.4 not that it matters seeing as this seems to be purely hardware.
Maybe the laptop battery is worn out, won't hold a charge. Maybe even preventing the charger from powering the computer.
There's no CMOS battery that I can see, the battery makes little difference, it still behaves this way wether it's plugged in or not.
From a mac-support forum on the CMOS battery; 'Why? If the battery is bad then take the computer in for service. The battery is not user accessible.'
have you tried resetting the PMU by taking out the batt and holding down the power button then putting back together and booting. if that fails flash the pram, if your still having problems re-install all bundled software off the boots discs. If you think its a bettery problem apposed to a software issue download and install this coconut battery> http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19085/coconutbattery it will give you a diagnostic of your battery and tell you how unhappy it is/is not. if all the above fails, get a pack of hob-nobs and a cup of tea, then throw that piece of s**t out the window. good luck
Tried all of those things, battery is good. But it doesn't matter anyway, it does this independent of the battery. I reckon the SMC is screwed. Tea and window it is.
I assume there are no updates available for the SMC? If the SMC is corrupted, maybe re-flashing the same firmware will fix it. Here they give an example: http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=726&page=3
how about a clean install? zero the hd then start a fresh....that wont work after the tea and window bit though... i had one of these with similar issues, when i got it repaired they just gave me another mother board. luck be with you
Problem has changed a little bit now. I can usually start it first time but now it just switches off at random. Usually after about 10 mins. I think it's fair to say it's totally screwed. Probably going to stick it on eBay as spares repairs and save for a new one, real shame as when it is up and running it's pretty good to use. EDIT: Although I have just discovered where the PRAM battery is, going to be a total strip down to get to it but I think It's worth changing it as one last option.
