Issues with computer turning off when battery dies

It seems there isn't a set rule with my macbook when it comes to what happens when the laptop runs out of battery. Sometimes it goes to sleep, so that when I plug it back in it automatically turns on instantly. Sometimes it hibernates, so when it's plugged back in i have to press the space bar and then it loads directly into OS X but takes 30 seconds or so, but everything is saved. But often (and I'd say +50% of the time) it turns off, so all my work is lost and turning it back on starts from the beginning.

What do I do to fix this issue?

 

Not run the machine until the battery dies?

 

do you have anything positive to contribute, or you're here to throw useless comments around?

 

completely agree, are you looking for issues?

 

Sorry if my answer is not what you wanted to read, but your issue is one of PLBKAC (problem lies between keyboard and chair). Now if you're not running your battery dry, and you're having a problem with suspend/resume, then that's different. If you're not running your system down, and all of a sudden your problems go away, well...

 

No sometimes I have no choice but to run the battery completely dry. I'm either on the plane or on the road or whatever, so I have no access to electricity. Sometimes when the battery goes completely dry, the computer goes to sleep. Sometimes it hibernates, and sometimes it just turns off. I want to know why it is different each time, and how i can have it so that it hibernates or goes to sleep instead of shutting off.

 

saturn, and circa, if you're not going to help just don't post.

sepandee. That's an odd problem. I've never experience that with any of the macbook[pro]s that I've dealt with. It may be worth it to give apple a call if you're still under warranty as it may be a symptom of a larger problem. The battery should never drain, and unless there's some configuration file that I don't know about, it should always go to sleep when there's 1 or 2% power left.

 

Look in the Energy Saver and see if theres anything in there.

 

nope ...........

 

if depends on how long the machine is asleep with no battery power, as it continues to drain somewhat while sleeping.

if you don't want to lose any work, just save and shutdown.

however, you should be able to put the computer to sleep for a certain amount of time returning power, without losing your work, but it is not guaranteed. it alerts you when you are on standby power, just make sure to save before you go to sleep just to be sure.

 

After doing a bit more research, it seems as if it's one of two things:

If you're on Leopard, go into Energy Saver and reset it to default. If you've never changed it, then change it, restart, then change it back to default and restart again. Complicated, but it's one of those Leopard bugs that only affect like 25 people world wide.

If you're not on Leopard, or that doesn't help, take it in to an Apple store. Seems this really is a sign of more serious problems(both battery and electrical system).


Are you getting a warning about ten minutes before it shuts down?

Lastly, you should make sure you have safe sleep enabled as it seems some people have problems after disabling safe sleep. In terminal:

Code:

$ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3
$ sudo nvram "use-nvramrc?"=true