Chosen Solution

My lady’s MBP (13", 2009) is quite dead. The night before, she said it was exhibiting some poltergeist-y mouse movements and application opening. It was also running slow, apparently. I checked it out the next morning, running DiskUtility which repaired a few permissions/errors (don’t remember exactly) and I didn’t have any issues with input apparitions or phantom keystrokes. I remember it was running a little warm for my tastes, but nothing crazy. I figured it just needed to get some dust cleared out of there. Neither of us know of any water damage, and we’re the only two in the house. After my efforts with DiskUtility, I sat it down on my other desk and continued working with my actual “work” projects (Hackintosh file system “repair” and wiping a Chromebook, blah blah blah). My guess is that since I didn’t plug the charger in, it ran out of battery. I assumed it went into sleep more or whatever. I don’t remember what the battery level was actually at before I turned away from it… “Whoops, forgot to plug the charger in!”, I said to myself. Plug the charger in, went back to my business. Minutes later, I try to turn it on. Nothing. No fans, no screen flashes, no noise at all. Completely dead. I took another break from my work and started searching online. Many accounts of promising battery-unplugging and magsafe unplugging exist where people with very similar issues have fixed their problem in a matter of minutes. I opened the bottom of the MBP and tried these. Nothing. I check the battery charge status button on the side. No lights at all. We’ve got two chargers (one for bedroom, one for living room) and neither did anything different. I checked the output of both with a multimeter and they both seem correct. Wiggling the connectors or cables does nothing. The contacts were quite clean for both chargers and the magsafe port itself. At this point I noticed the dim green light on the magsafe connector. If I flip the connector and look from an acute angle, I can see dim orange. I find that if I plug it in over and over again, it eventually flashes full/bright orange, once quickly, before being dim. I looked up the SMC reset… but duh, the computer won’t turn on at all so these keystrokes do nothing to bring it to life. I found some people mentioned replacing the DC-in board. Cheap fix, so I ordered a part from eBay. It arrived a few days later, but had no effect on the computer. A year ago or so, I replaced (at great cost…) the battery because the old one had bloated just enough to hinder the use of the trackpad click. I tried tossing the old battery in to see if it helped. Nope. So I left it for two nights without the charger or battery plugged in. Nope. So I left it for another two nights with everything plugged in. Nope. Today I found a page that shows the solder pads (near the keyboard connector) that can be used to turn the computer on without using the power button. Nope. So I’m pretty lost right now! We’ve already budgeted for a used replacement of sorts (something newer, maybe a 15") but ideally I could figure this one out and everything would be back to normal. Logic board replacement, even from eBay, is prohibitively expensive - almost the cost of the exact model laptop (pre-owned, of course). To close: nearly every instance of this machine’s problems (from other owners, online) have been solved with simple action… but nothing has worked for me! What gives? Did I miss something, or is the logic board just… a goner?

So intermittent light on the magsafe. Check U6901. PP3V42_G3H at pin 5 is 3.42v, or less? This is the most common issue on this older 820-2530/820-2879 logic board. This video directly applies to your older board where they placed the onewire circuit components in the corner where moisture comes in. Let’s rule this out before even bothering to troubleshoot anything else because it is such a common problem. This is a fairly high resolution video with good images of the exact area I want you to measure, and follows along in the schematic to explain what’s going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI7rvFLU…

Did replacing the logic board do it? I’ve replaced the i/o board as you did; the logic board; and even the keyboard, thinking maybe there was some kind of short in the on/off button. Still dead. Symptom is bright green magsafe turns to very dim green after a couple minutes. Machine does nothing.

Does this apply to Mid 2012 Macbook Pro non-retina?

I’m following this thread… As my late 2011 MBP is the same! Here’s my account of what I did: My MacBook Pro late 2011 not-turn-on problem SOLVED: Unibody Battery Indicator Light Board connector was unplugged & re-plugged in immediately. My unibody laptop had these symptoms… But none of the solutions below here worked this time:

  • battery would not charge
  • magsafe was not working properly and not charging battery
  • disconnect battery, hold power button for 5 seconds then connect with only magsafe and continue to hold power button for 10 seconds, did not work
  • battery indicator light did not work
  • SMC reset, PRam reset and fn-contro- command-power combo button press would not turn on MacBook Hope this helps someone… Update: the laptop did turn on a few times… But still not charging via the plugged in MacSafe charger. Once the battery reached about 30%, it shut off abruptly… Not shut down! Since then, it returned to square one. ..& would not turn on again

Not sure if this is of any help, but I just fixed a dim green light by unplugging the “battery indicator cable connector”. I went through disconnecting everything one by one and connected the charger cable after each thing I removed until the charger turned bright green, might be worth a shot. At least this way of tracking down the problem worked very well for me.