Pesky Powerbook power/pointer problems

January 26, 2006 4:24 PM

Mac NotWorkingLikeItShouldFilter: PB 12”: i) Pointer disappears upon closing mac after connected to video projector/monitor. ii) Battery not registering charge loss – machine shuts down unexpectedly. Haylp!

Unrelated Problems:

1) I use an external monitor and video projection a lot – both connect through a little white VGA adapter that fits into the mini-DVI slot. When I remove this connector and shut my mac, it sleeps as designed. When I open it up again, the pointer (desktop arrow) disappears. The only way I can get the pointer back is by resetting (logging of doesn’t do any good) Suggestions to regain the pointer without reset? This happens sometimes without sleep too!

2) I bought a new battery from newer technology. Despite me running it down ad charging it up fresh, the mac never knows what charge the battery has: always displays 100%. Consequently I’ll be using the mac on battery power when BAM! The power to the screen, or worse, the computer will just switch off. I’ve tried resetting the power management unit, and tried running the battery down and charging it fresh (following discharge procedure), but the power indicator always reads 100% when running on battery. Note: when the battery’s empty, the mac seems to know that it’s at 0% and shows it charging up from 0->100%.

I have a 12” Powerbook, G4, 1Mhz/768MB, OS X 10.3.9. All updates installed.

posted by lalochezia to computers & internet (3 comments total)

My experience with number one is that you have to make sure that the cursor is on your laptop screen when you unplug the monitor, otherwise it gets "lost."
posted by maxreax at 6:09 PM on January 26, 2006

for 1) the cursor might be on the region of the desktop that the external monitor was covering.
After disconnecting from the external monitor go to "System Preferences --> Displays" and click on "Detect Displays".
posted by golo at 7:14 PM on January 26, 2006

I have the same computer as you (right down to the amount of RAM) and I'm typing on it right now. I've got 10.4.4 though.

The shutting down issue is very likely to be either an old or faulty battery. They naturally degrade over time and gradually hold less and less charge. Sometimes, when this happens the operating system is no longer able to calculate how much charge is left, thus the sudden shutdowns. Usually, the computer should just go to sleep when the batter reaches a low enough level and that protects whatever you were working on till you can plug it back in (for up to several days).

You might try pluggin in a mouse to have the pointer show up again. I've never had the problem, but the occurence of an input device being plugged in often reloads drivers.
posted by sirsteven at 11:01 PM on January 26, 2006