24" imac 2009 dead -- any advice?

[thekb]

My 24" 2009 intel imac 3.06 C2D would not power on this morning. Nothing. No chime. No lights. No sounds at all.

I have tried resetting SMC & PRAM, disconnecting power for several minutes, disconnecting all peripherals, different power cord, different outlet. Still nothing at all. I have not installed any aftermarket memory either. So my inexpert opinion is the thing is dead.

I guess the most likely culprit is a bad power supply, given the symptoms, but could it be anything else? Logic board? How much for Apple to diagnose and replace? How hard is it to replace a power supply -- is it plug-n-play or does it involve soldering? I am not a computer tech, but have swapped hard drives, installed cd drives and memory on my previous PC's, so I am not completely clueless. Still, I have seen the videos of people opening their imacs and know it is not for the faint of heart.

I guess if I decide to dive in, I may as well also plan to replace the hard drive (either a speed demon SSD or a big honkin 3TB drive).

Thanks for any advice

 

[Roller]

Sounds very similar to what happened to my 2006 iMac a few years ago- it was completely dead. I replaced the battery on the logic board and it's been fine since. I don't know how difficult it is to do on a 2009 iMac, but it couldn't be harder than it was on the older computer.

 

[thekb]

Sounds very similar to what happened to my 2006 iMac a few years ago- it was completely dead. I replaced the battery on the logic board and it's been fine since. I don't know how difficult it is to do on a 2009 iMac, but it couldn't be harder than it was on the older computer.

Interesting ... how did you figure out it was a dead battery?

I am interested to know how difficult it is to replace.

 

[Fishrrman]

"Interesting ... how did you figure out it was a dead battery?"

The "dead motherboard battery -- can't boot" problem goes back to Macs all the way to the late 1980's. The MB battery keeps the PRAM alive, if it loses power, so doe the PRAM, and the computer may not respond to pushing the power-on button.

Sometimes disconnecting from wall power may get it going, sometimes removing and then re-installing the RAM.

This may/may not have anything to do with why the OP's Mac won't start. But it could be an issue....

 

[swordfish5736]

Interesting ... how did you figure out it was a dead battery?

I am interested to know how difficult it is to replace.

It's not that hard of a process on the 24" model. Just takes some time and patience. You'll need to pull the front glass off then remove the aluminum bezel by undoing some torx screws. Check out ifixit for a step by step guide

 

[thekb]

Update:

I left the imac unplugged overnight and decided to try again today ... success! It booted normally. So does that mean it is fixed, or the problem may recur? I think that should rule out a bad PSU or logic board at least, right?