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paulmars

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 10, 2020
3
0
It wont start and not sure how to fix.


Ive fixed many Desktops and a few laptops, but never an apple. This is my g/fs and she insists that she needs to bring it to official apple repair store. She dont have the money and wont anytime soon, so every few weeks she tries to turn it on and is bummed all day when it fails to boot. She says the SSD is soldered in, so we cant take it out to read it on another computer and she says no matter what, if u open it, no apple store will even consider repairing it, cuz it's an apple corparate policy that all authorized repair stores need to comply. Is this true?


Looking online I see that it looks like the SSD is plug in and we can buy external devices to read her files from another computer. id like confirmation on this.


Also any things that I might try (with her permission of course) to isolate what might be wrong.


She bought it used. She says its a 2016 model. It worked fine for a few years. Its been thru several moves and she is not very careful with her stuff. So, it might have been dropped or banged around. She insists that she never has liquids near it cuz she ruined a laptop years ago with spilt soda. Months ago when she turned it on, it started to boot, then shut down. She tried again and the next two times it did the same. Since then it wont even start to boot. It's totally dead. She has it pugged into the wall power outlet when she tries.


Any ideas?


tks,

paul
 

Analias

macrumors regular
May 13, 2019
134
47
The A1502 does not have a soldered on ssd, it is a plug-in, pcie ssd. Apple is never going to know if you remove the bottom screws, there is no way for them to tell the bottom cover has been off. You will need a pentalobe screwdriver to get it off though. As for the repair, take it to Apple to see if you qualify for a warranty repair, if not then it'll be much cheaper to get it repaired by a non-authorised third party.
 

Fishrrman

macrumors Penryn
Feb 20, 2009
28,763
12,868
Do you have a brick-n-mortar Apple Store anywhere nearby?

If so, make an appointment (done online) and bring it in to them. Even though out-of-warranty, they may have a trick or two that could get it booting again.

This is THE FIRST step you take before doing anything else.
 
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