Help!!! MBP 2012 shuts off when moved, stays off

[bellspot]

Hello!

I'm desperate for help here... My 2012 MBP has decided to die and is not booting up.

It essentially shuts off if it gets moved even slightly, which is highly impractical for a laptop. Then, it takes forever to turn back on and gives no signs of life during this time (last time it shut off it took about two hours for it to react when I click the power button.) When this happens,bye only reaction I can get from it happens when the charger is connected: the orange light turns green when I press the power button but goes back to orange when I release the button. No chimes or anything. Just read. Kaput. After a while it sometimes can boot up normally and there seem to be no issues with it until it shuts off again.

Background: I upgraded to El Capitan two days before this behavior started. I took the laptop to the genius bar where they changed the battery that was falling; they thought this would fix what they deemed a "battery life" issue. Yet two days later the issue persisted. Laptop has been upgraded to have SSD + second hard drive inside and 8 gb of ram. I ran the diagnostics tool a couple of days after the battery change and the system showed no errors or issues.

Any ideas? My laptop is currently just sitting there, not booting up or doing anything when I try to boot it up. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

 

[thats all folks]

so, does it work at all when running just off battery? did you pay for the new battery? you should consider going back to them. do you have a second power supply? those go bad too, sometimes in terrible ways.

 

[bellspot]

so, does it work at all when running just off battery? did you pay for the new battery? you should consider going back to them. do you have a second power supply? those go bad too, sometimes in terrible ways.

The device works off battery when it does turn on, and it did so even before the battery replacement last week. Yes I paid for a new battery, and the laptop does not turn on when connected to a second power supply. Currently the battery should be at about 80% charge.

The sleep light does not turn on either when hitting the power button. And nothing happens after attempting to reset the SMC.

 

[thats all folks]

The device works off battery when it does turn on, and it did so even before the battery replacement last week. Yes I paid for a new battery, and the laptop does not turn on when connected to a second power supply. Currently the battery should be at about 80% charge.

The sleep light does not turn on either when hitting the power button. And nothing happens after attempting to reset the SMC.

Oy. I got nothing. Anecdotally, I once had an 11" Air that would not turn on or respond in any way at all (except to charge the battery) after days of futzing (out of warranty) gave up and put it on a shelf and let it be. A month plus later, while straitening up, pulled it down, hit the power button, it fired right up and continued to operate as if nothing had ever gone wrong.

 

[bellspot]

Oy. I got nothing. Anecdotally, I once had an 11" Air that would not turn on or respond in any way at all (except to charge the battery) after days of futzing (out of warranty) gave up and put it on a shelf and let it be. A month plus later, while straitening up, pulled it down, hit the power button, it fired right up and continued to operate as if nothing had ever gone wrong.

Wow... Such mercurial machines... Sometimes when it did this during the past week, it'll come alive again after a few hours. But not today. Hopefully it turns on again so I can at least get a final backup before taking it in

 

[Samuelsan2001]

I would say it's possibly the SATA cable damaged during the battery change, they are notoriously flaky in this model. At $20 from Amazon it may be worth a try....

 

[Fishrrman]

OP:
You can open up the MacBook and work on some of these problems yourself.
Opening the MBPro is -easy-, all you need is a Phillips #00 driver and a TORX T-6 driver.
Go to ifixit.com to see how to take the back cover off.

The drive and the RAM dimms are "right there for you" when you do so.

Pay attention to Samuelsan's post above this one.
If the SATA cable isn't working properly, it will cut off communications between the MacBook and the motherboard -- could be the cause of the shutdowns.

It might also have something to do with the new RAM.
The RAM dims may not be "seated" correctly in the slots.
Might be worth taking the back off, then GENTLY wiggling them with your fingers to ensure that they're snug in their slots.

If that doesn't change things...
Do you still have the OLD, ORIGINAL RAM around?
You could open the back, swap the RAM dimms, and try running that way for a few days.

Just wondering -
Do you still have the ORIGINAL hard drive that was taken out (when you put the SSD into it)?
If you put this into an external 2.5 USB3 enclosure you can try booting via USB.
The point is to boot and run this way a while, "bypassing" the internal SSD for the moment.
If you pick up the Macbook now (along with the external drive), does it shut down, or keep running?
If it keeps running, I think that -might- point towards the defective ribbon cable as Samuelsan mentioned above.

 

[jerryk]

Since Apple changed the battery I am inclined to think the cables are broken or loose. Take it back and make them fix it.