A few weeks ago, on my 2006 with 16,000 miles, I had an odd experience. After driving the car a few days earlier, I went out into the garage and noticed the interior lights, starter button, mirror lights, and IP lights were all on. I opened the door, got inside, but could not turn the lights off. No exterior lights were on. I pushed the starter button, but the battery was too low to crank the engine. I checked it w/ a voltmeter at about 6v. The Interstate battery was a little over a year old. I put a CTEK on it and got the battery fully charged after about twelve hours, and from then on everything functioned normally. Is it normal for interior lights to illuminate, et al, when the voltage drops abnormally low? I've had low-battery problems with this car for years, and a reputable shop found no abnormal/unusual drain. Has anyone else had similar experiences? When running, the charging system is normal, and usually reads around 14v, or thereabouts.

 

The lights should have timed out in about 20 mins, but the dimmer button on the left hand side of the dash under the pod buttons/above the hood and gas cap buttons, that you turn to dim/brighten the dash lights, is the same **** you push in to over ride the lights turning off on there own. So best guess, you hit the button with your knee, it's over riding the lights auto off, to stay on. To turn the lights back off, just push it in one more time.

And why in the things wholly, did GM not design the button as a pull out and hold button to over right the lights to keep them on, and instead it being a blind multi push in button that you have no clue what position it in, still behooves all of us.

 

I had similar symptoms on my Centennial GS vert when the battery went bad. The passenger headlight was on, front driver side marker light was on, and tail lights were on. Start button was illuminated and the dash was partially illuminated. I suspected my battery was going bad because it had recently not cranked over after the car hadn't been driven for a couple of days. I had recently topped it off with a Ctek.

My symptoms started after I started the car, pulled it out of the basement garage and put it in the main driveway. When I finished the work in the basement garage I got back in the car to put it up. Hit the start button, heard the relays clicking like normal, but it didn't turn over. Button wouldn't turn off, dash was lit up all wonky, and discovered the other issues when I got out of the car. I had already decided to get a new Duracell AGM at Sam's Club so I pulled it, headed to Sam's, and installed the new battery after topping the charge off. A little over 2 years now and all has been good. It's crazy what symptoms low voltage conditions can cause on today's rolling computers.

 

I appreciate the comments. It seems that low batteries cause the electronic gremlins to appear and manifest their presence in weird and inexplicable ways.