PRAM LocATION ISSUE

[dirtymarshall]

please can some one help me out. Ive got an early 2009 macbook 13". Got it at a deal from someone who apparently locked it and could not get it to boot again because they lost the password! It was taken to an authorised dealer wo claims it is not under warranty for this issue and that a new logic board is required... I found this hard to believe and since i feel if i was to be given the right direction i maybe can fix the issue... so i do a PRam reset but the system would load with a question mark as was doin before i did the pram reset. i stripped it and saw there was no PRam battery in the system.. am i missing something, could this be the reason? So i ordered a PRam battery tried to insatll it but could not locate a connector on the board to install the Battery,,, so please help me out to find what i am missing! Macbook 13" white 2.0 core 2 duo 2gb mem

[dirtymarshall]

Please can someone give me some help 68 people looked at the thread but no help c'mon desperation!

[DewGuy1999]

Will this help iFixit: Installing MacBook Core 2 Duo PRAM Battery

[dirtymarshall]

Originally Posted by DewGuy1999

Will this help iFixit: Installing MacBook Core 2 Duo PRAM Battery

thanks for the link however i have always frequented their site for help however the board they show is a different model a you should see from the pics, and if you zoom in on my board i dont see the connection... any frther help is greatly appreciated

[DewGuy1999]

Sorry, that wasn't the right one. I don't have any idea if this applies to that Macbook or not, but in the past I believe the iBooks, didn't have a PRAM battery, they used a capacitor (I think it was). Maybe you could contact iFixit and see what they have to say, they seem like they may be the best 3rd party source for that kind of info.

[DewGuy1999]

I just re-read your original message and noticed a couple of things I didn't pay attention to before.

Originally Posted by dirtymarshall

Got it at a deal from someone who apparently locked it and could not get it to boot again because they lost the password!

Do you mean that they had set a user password for when they log in and couldn't remember it? If that's the case you can boot to the original OS X disc (DVD) and reset the password.

Originally Posted by dirtymarshall

so i do a PRam reset but the system would load with a question mark as was doin before i did the pram reset.

The blinking question mark on startup usually means the Mac can't find a bootable OS.

I'm not sure either of these have anything to do with a PRAM battery.

[DewGuy1999]

Originally Posted by dirtymarshall

thanks for the link however i have always frequented their site for help however the board they show is a different model a you should see from the pics, and if you zoom in on my board i dont see the connection... any frther help is greatly appreciated

I just went and looked at that iFixit page again and noticed this:

The PRAM battery on early 2009 MacBooks is non-replaceable.

I guess this answers the question of where the PRAM battery connects to the logic board. I bet it uses the capacitor method like the iBooks did.

[dMacGuru]

Originally Posted by DewGuy1999

I just went and looked at that iFixit page again and noticed this:

The PRAM battery on early 2009 MacBooks is non-replaceable.

I guess this answers the question of where the PRAM battery connects to the logic board. I bet it uses the capacitor method like the iBooks did.

Apple stopped putting PRAM batteries in a bunch of laptops a while back depending upon the regular battery to keep the info current, and using a sleepimage file to capture the contents of the RAM upon shutdown, or when the MacBook went to sleep. The file is normally invisible, but takes as much room on your hard drive as memory installed, which is one reason why it takes a while for you to shutdown your laptop. When you do a clean install on a hard drive and you notice there is more memory used than the files installed, that is what is taking up the extra hard drive memory, the sleepimage file.

There is a WARNING in the user manual about not moving a laptop when you put it to sleep until you see the led flash, as during the writing of the sleepimage file any movement may corrupt the hard drive!

It is my understanding it is not just recent laptops that no longer have the battery but some iMacs and Mac Pros.. Can anyone confirm that?