Chosen Solution

== Is it my logic board? or my top case?== mine is the model with the 3.06GHz processor and a matte screen. My computer was fine until April 2010, when I returned from 2 weeks in Haiti [volunteering, not a holiday] with HD errors [was left in backpack, in full sun for an hour one day]. I replaced HD with a Seagate Momentus Solid State Hybrid SATA Drive. Blew out some dust with compressed air since the case was open. Optical drive stopped reading and writing in Nov 2011. So, I started copying over firewire to the dvd burner on my old powerbook.  I often keep the Macbook pro running for a week or so before rebooting… but I run disk utility regularly, and repair permissions every month or so.  Otherwise, everything was fine until it stopped dead last week. I went out for groceries, came back… dead. It was running when I left. It was cold. No boot, no chime.  It was connected to an external display, so I knew it wasn’t just the backlight. I read a lot here, at ifixit, to try and figure it out. I followed the apple troubleshooting and disconnected all the peripherals and zapped the PRAM, reset the SMC, to no avail. If I held down the power I could get the fans to spin up and the tiny light at the front to go on, steady. But that’s it. Since I have no applecare, I cracked it open and swapped RAM in and out to see if it has gone bad. While was in there, I blew out some dust. The heat sink [the long twisty one from the fans across the chips] had obviously been hot: it had slightly adhered to the black plastic that covers the keyboard. I feel like it has been running hot, but I cannot quantify that with numbers. I checked the logic board for anything obvious and saw a small amount of corrosion on the board near the audio jacks and card slot. Mostly, the solder appeared dull compared to the rest of the board. I cleaned it with 99% alcohol on a little brush. I was checking it out with a loupe, and I could see dust on everything, so I gave the whole board a bit of a once-over with the alcohol/brush. I put everything back together. No chime, no signs of life of any sort [except the battery gauge responds accurately]. The battery charges, the adapter goes from orange to green. I was pretty careful with discharging static before cleaning the logic board. There may have been a tiny splash of coffee a couple of days before this happened [– it was on the speaker grille on the DVD side of the case, and there is no evidence of it inside the case, but I have not burrowed into the keyboard]. I disconnected the HD, optical drive, airport, bluetooth, battery gauge, one speaker, keyboard backlight, trackpad and keyboard. I kept the display connector connected [and the speaker and mic on the other side of the LB]. From the keyboard connector, I connected the fifth pin from the left to ground with the power adapter connected and the fans powered up. No other signs of life [as far as I could tell] – no chime [but one speaker is disconnected], and there is nothing else connected to light up… but the display doesn’t do anything. I reconnected everything except the keyboard and optical drive. Powered up again with the contacts on the keyboard connector: the fans, front “sleep light” and HD power up. Still no display, or chime. I connected my ipod to a usb port to see if it charges. It doesn’t seem to. I am a bit freaked out, since I spend about 12 hours a day working on my computer [image processing, video editing, writing, browsing, my only phone is voip, and some large file transfers regularly]. It has been very dry here. I have accidentally zapped the trackpad numerous times with static electricity. Is my logic board a goner?  I have a multimeter but don’t have any idea of what to check, or where… I am grateful for any suggestions, because i am at a bit of a loss here, and I don’t know what to do next. If I borrow a usb keyboard should I try to safe boot… would that even work?? could it just be the top case? Please advise….

I apologize for the delay in my answer. I got side tracked on other projects. Your logic board is fried, why I don’t know. Here is my suggestion for repair: This only works if there is no liquid or physical damage. Call 1-800-SOS-APPL. When you call mumble inaudible sounds, that way the system doesn’t know where to send you and gets a person outside the normal Apple repair department. Explain to them the laptops lack of response, the various things you have tried, including removing the RAM and no beeps with the attempted power up and you want the $280 flat rate repair ( I would not volunteer the coffee.). If they start talking about tiers etc… argue with them that flat rate repairs have no tiers. If they stick to their guns tell them you believe the $280 flat rate repair is through Depot. You want the flat rate repair from Depot. Depot is an Apple sister/daughter company that refurbishes Apple products for Apple. All the refurbished Apple computers/laptops sold at the Apple store are reconditioned by Depot. Stick to your guns. If your computer has no physical or liquid damage, Apple will repair it in the price range I have mentioned. If you take it to the Apple store they will give the same garb about tiers etc… Tell them you want the Depot flat rate repair. But again, make sure there’s no liquid damage, or it will come right back to you unrepaired.

  • Unplug laptop from charger
  • Hold PWR button for 10 seconds
  • While still holding the PWR button, plug in charger and KEEP HOLDING PWR button
  • After 10 seconds of holding the PWR button with the charger plugged in, LET GO of the PWR button and then IMMEDIATELY (within 1 second) press the PWR button again as normally. Follow the above steps exactly. Your laptop should power on with the fan spinning full-blast. If it continues to boot and function properly, your temperature sensor on the CPU has been damaged and is preventing the computer from functioning properly. The process above bypasses that sensor and allows you to test the rest of the computer. Unfortunately, if the sensor is bad, there is no real way to fix it. However, if the above process works, you can continue to use the computer in that condition until it dies from something else. You will have to live with the fan being on 100% of the time, but will at least have a working computer. Good luck!

I solved this problem in my macbook pro late 2011. First i did pram vram reset and smc reset with no success. Then i tried inserting a dvd and tried pressing eject on startup. I tried removing the Ram sticks and disconnecting the hard drive also. But nothing happened at all. So i tried booting the mac and leaving it turned on with the black screen and the little blue led lit until the battery was completely off (i checked battery status clicking the little button on the left side). Then i put it on charge until the battery was fully charged again. Then i did an smc reset. Finally i just pressed the power button and it booted! So i think in my case it could have been some problem with the internal power management. Hope other people could fix this problem too.

hello katie, i’m new here in Q & A. i’m not really good in english. try to resolder the corrosion on the board that you see.

I have exact same problem with my Macbook Pro 13’’. I holded power button for 15 secs to turn it off and after that it didn’t start up. Black screen. Flshing light in the front and beeping sounds when removed RAM, but what do I do from there on? Any help would be well appriciated! Thank you!

I am have macbook pro 15 2011 i7 Suddenly my macbook pro goes to black screen i was using bootcamp windows 7 Now when i turn on it start but it is on black screen and the keyboard not working and apple logo not flashing.can you tell me some advice please.it happen to me 2 month ago than i resset pram than turn on but now i dont know what to do.please help.