MacBook sometimes won't turn off, drains my battery.

Question

Hi all. Thanks in advance for any help I may recieve.
First of all, this doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it's sure annoying! So, I push the power button on my computer. When the dialog box comes up, I click shut down, or press enter. Just like normal, right? Normally this works fine, but not always. Sometimes, my applications all seem to quit, and my dock and menu bar dissappear, and all that is left is my desktop. This is what always happens, except that normally, the screen goes black after a few seconds of just showing my desktop. Sometimes this takes longer than normal, but I assume the computer is just busy doing some maintenance or whatever. Usually this is true, and it shuts down within a minute. But sometimes, very rarely, it doesn't. It just stays on with only the desktop showing. After a few seconds of just the desktop showing, I walk away and assume it will just turn off. Sometimes this happens when I turn it off for the night. The problem is, since it doesn't turn off, and doesn't go to sleep or screen saver because it is almost off, the battery dies overnight. I have checked, and this has lowered my battery's health. I have to charge it all the way from 0%, which A) takes a long time, and B) is bad for the battery's health.
Has anyone else had this problem? Has anyone found a solution? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Nate

Answer 1

First, if you are using the computer at your home then connect the AC adaptor. Do not run on battery if you can use the AC adaptor. It does not harm the battery in any way and will prevent the battery from draining in the event this problem occurs.
Now, when your computer does not fully shutdown as you've described it means something that was running on the computer will not quit and remains running, hence the computer can never fully shutdown. If this happens only rarely then you may simply have a file corruption problem that may cause this to happen or you may have an incompatible third-party utility installed that is misbehaving occasionally. Start by doing some basic maintenance. Get a utility such as TinkerTool System and use it to clear out user, system, and font caches as well as old log files (immediate restart is then required.) Also use it to force running the Unix maintenance scripts. Then use Disk Utility to repair the hard drive and permissions:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger and Leopard.) After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.0 for Tiger, and 4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
Check the console and crash logs using the Console application in the Utilities folder. Look for entries around the time of the last (or next) occurrence of an abnormal shutdown. You may find clues to what particular software did not properly quit.
Never close the lid on a laptop until you are sure the computer has shutdown.