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I've got a MacBook Pro (mid 2012 using Majave) which was bought reconditioned 2 years ago. It's been great, no issues. I updated a search engine app (Ecosia) while the battery was charging, once full I decided to it shut down as I don't recall the last time I did this. It wouldn't turn on after this so I plugged the Magsafe back in, turned it on and it started up....

Now it's showing battery at 0% - Magsafe light is on green and icon shows "Battery not charging" "Power source: Power adapter". It's taking ages to boot up (though all the usual things happen) and i'm often getting the spinning wheel, which never happened before, it was always quick and responsive.

I've done the following with no change to the above issues:

Deleted the app I updated thinking it might be that Bought a new Magsafe (light is the same) Cleaned/checked the MagSafe connection Updated Safari & security update (not yet Catalina though) Scanned using Malwarebytes - 0 threats detected

I have 360GB left of 480GB & only use Safari, Mail & Word.

The battery shows 334 cycles - well below the 1000 it could take before needing replacement.

I've spent hours googling all the possibilities and now I'm here. Now we're all in Covid 19 lockdown meaning taking it to someone isn't an option so ......Can anyone help please?

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Your battery is dead.

I’ve written a short guide to diagnosing a battery problem which you’ve already done. A battery charging or not won’t have anything to do with the OS installed, how much space you have or even if there’s a virus. Remember, your battery will charge when the machine is off. So, while checking that info doesn’t hurt, it’s not going to help solve the issue.

There’s one other thing and that’s to check the charger itself.

For more info see the following posts:

One last thing you can try is to disconnect the battery and try to run your Mac. Yes, you won’t be able to disconnect your charger, but it will help you diagnose the battery issue by removing it from the equation.

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  • Thanks Allan....Ref my post, I've bought and tried a new charger which made no difference. I mentioned the OS, space info etc. in case this might help, the battery not charging happened at the same time the mac started being non responsive, which again I thought might be significant in helping with an answer.
    – Bec
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 5:44
  • The battery could be acting as a “drain” - it’s pulling more than it should. You may have seen this in cars when no matter what you do, you can’t jump start a dead car because the battery is so dead. When that happens, your power adapter simply can’t supply enough power to charge and run the Mac.
    – Allan
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 5:48
  • I understand your analogy, perhaps the battery is dead - though it's showing "Normal" when I checked. It is a non removable battery, if I was more savvy I'd consider your disconnecting the battery option. Thanks again.
    – Bec
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 5:56
  • That’s one of the drawbacks; there’s no electronic dipstick to accurately measure battery capacity, it’s a calculation based on the current being measured at that point in time. The problem is, it can’t detect a cell that won’t hold a charge
    – Allan
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 5:59
  • I've just checked my Activity Monitor and kernel_task is using around 320 on the CPU....this seems high?
    – Bec
    Commented Mar 26, 2020 at 6:21

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