Any Macbook experts out there?

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
07/21/2015 at 11:50 • Filed to: None

I went to fire up my old (2008) Macbook Pro yesterday and nothing happened. I haven’t used it for a few weeks, but it ran fine up before. Here are the symptoms:

1) No response to power button

2) Battery showing 1 flashing LED when button on battery is pressed.

3) Charger shows solid green LED

I’ve tried a couple of different 85W chargers but that didn’t make a difference. I’ve reset the SMC, let it charge overnight, cleaned out the magsafe port, all to no avail.

Is there anything I forgot to try?

DISCUSSION (16)

HammerheadFistpunch > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 11:52

any audio beeps?

MLGCarGuy > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 11:53

It’s a possibility that the battery may be dead, because according to Apple:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201842

1 flashing LED means it’s not charged yet.

Patrick Nichols > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 11:55

I think you can charge it in the microwave...

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > HammerheadFistpunch
07/21/2015 at 11:57

No beeps. No signs of life other than the LEDs on the battery and MagSafe adapter.

JGrabowMSt > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 11:59

hold down the power button while also holding down command, option, p and r keys for 10 seconds.

If that doesn’t help you, you may be SOL. A green light from the magsafe charger means fully charged, if the indicator flashes one only the last LED, it’s trying to say the battery is dead. That’s a logic board issue.

What I would suggest is if it doesn’t turn on after the PRAM reset, make a genius bar appointment if you can, go in, and just see if they’ll run diagnostic on it. My 2011 15” got a new logic board for free (4 years out of warranty) because it failed a specific test during diagnostics and was part of a replacement program.

You may get lucky, the worst you can do is get an estimate from them.

Also, are you confident enough to take the bottom cover off? I would unplug the battery and see if it starts working then. If the battery has an internal problem and unplugging it makes it work, you could try getting a new battery and seeing if it works with that. It’s only 10 screws on the bottom to get it open, you have to pry a little bit, but the bottom will pop off.

Hard to suggest much more, I was the lead tech at a computer repair shop for 5 years, without the laptop in front of me, I’m not 100% sure where else to go.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > MLGCarGuy
07/21/2015 at 11:59

That’s a possibility, but even with the battery removed the machine won’t start. I would expect that the machine should still run even without a battery, but perhaps that’s a false assumption.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 12:01

How many times does the power indicator flash, before it pauses and repeats?

3-times might be a RAM issue.

If the charger plug is showing an indicator light, either amber or green, then the power connection is fine. Red would be an error, and no light on the magsafe plug means no connection.

You said you have reset the System Management Controller, I assume you mean that you have disconnected the AC adapter, held down the power button for more than 10 seconds to make sure it is forced down, and then held down Shift-Control-Option-Command together, and pressed the power button and held all of that for at least 3 seconds, to discharge any residual current from the PMU and re-set it’s firmware state.

The other option might be a PRAM reset, which again, after forcing the machine to a power-off state by holding the power button down for more than 10 seconds, making sure everything is dark, including no LED indicator light, then holding option-command-”P”-”R” all together right after pushing the power button to start the machine... After 3 seconds or so, the machine should re-boot and chime more loudly.

If it doesn’t get to the chime stage at all, and only blinks the indicator light, that means it is failing the POST, Power On Self Test, and the blink code should reveal the basic reason. Sometimes it is as easy as un-seated RAM modules, or a module that needs to be replaced, or some other reason... all the way to the other end of the seriousness spectrum, to a failed main logic board that would require replacement of the board, or the whole computer, depending on the machine’s age and value.

SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 12:02

If a hammer or duct tape doesn’t fix it, it’s an electrical problem

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > JGrabowMSt
07/21/2015 at 12:12

Thanks for the info. I have no problem taking it apart, and at the moment the I have all of the screws out having checked all of the various connections to the logic board last night. Trying the machine without the battery doesn’t change anything. I tried resetting the PRAM but that too had no impact.

I guess I can’t be too disappointed. I found the computer at a Goodwill Outlet store and it set me back maybe $4. I replaced the broken display and it worked fine for quite some time. I hadn’t used it in a few weeks and when I went to use it last night found it unresponsive. I have no idea what could have caused it to fail when it was just sitting around, untouched, for a few weeks.

Übel > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 12:17

Have you tried turning it off and then back on again?

Galileo Humpkins (aka MC Clap Yo Handz) > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 12:27

It’s not. I had a MacBook with a ruined battery. I can confirm that it will run with the battery removed. Could be a logic board issue.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast.
07/21/2015 at 12:27

The LED on the computer itself never comes on, only the one on the MagSafe adapter, and that’s solid green regardless of whether or not the battery is installed. This is an early 2008 MBP and the SMC reset procedure is a little simpler that what you have described, but I’ve tried both with zero change in status. Since the machine refuses to start at all there isn’t a POST code that can be checked.

BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast. > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 13:03

It sounds as though it needs service, then. Something could be dislodged, or the main logic board may just simply be unresponsive.

If the PMU/SMC are still active enough to connect with the AC adapter it might not be a power system problem, but only the diagnostic utility will be able to isolate the reason.

Theoretically, it could even be a failed power button, and the button itself is not activating the system.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > BoxerFanatic, troublesome iconoclast.
07/21/2015 at 13:54

Thinking it might be the power button I did jumper the two contacts on the switch but it still didn’t start. I’ll head over to the Genius Bar and see what they can figure out...

Biased Plies > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
07/21/2015 at 15:52

There is a service bulletin (or whatever they’re called) on that generation Macbook Pro for the logic board/GPU crapping out, IIRC. That would result in no activity on the screen so that may be the cause. I’ll second someone else’s suggestion to take it in to a Genius bar. If you’re lucky, you qualify for that fix.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Biased Plies
07/21/2015 at 16:01

I’ve got an appointment at the Genius Bar this evening, but I’m not going to get my hopes up too far. As I recall, the video issue manifested itself in a system that would start but not display any output; in my case I can’t even get the machine to power up...