MacBook Pro 13" Unibody A1278 No Power

[dgohn1231]

Macbook Pro, 13" A1278 Model, model with internal black battery

Will not power on at all. Super dim green light on magsafe charger.

Background:

System wouldn't power on at all. Took apart, removed battery, motherboard, all connections,
looked for corrosion, dirty connections, etc. Put it all back together, plugged in charger,
system powered on and booted up just fine. Logged in, messed around, shut it down. Let it
fully charge for about 2 hours until charger light went from orange to green. Unplugged
charger, booted system up, no problems at all. Logged in, messed around for a few minutes
and powered it down completely. Left it off and unplugged for about 5 hours. Went to power
on and nothing. No lights, fans, nothing. Plugged in charger and only got super dim green
light. Still wouldn't power on. Tried all of the PRAM, SMC etc resets. Nothing. Battery
indicator lights don't show anything when button is pushed. Took it all apart again, did
the same thing as before. Put it back together. Nothing. Disconnected battery and plugged
in charger. Still dim green light and doesn't power on. Took charger and plugged into a
working macbook. It charged that macbook just fine. Had solid green light on that one when
fully charged. Unplugged it from working macbook and plugged it into dead macbook and the
light went fully green. Still didn't power on. Took it apart again, unplugged all
connections, put it all back together, plugged in charger and dim light again no power on.
Unplugged charger from dead macbook and plugged into good macbook and solid green light.
Then unplugged from good macbook and plugged into dead macbook, solid green light again but
still no power on. Tried cleaning magsafe jack, reseating it to make sure it was getting
solid connection, no dice. Completely disassembled again and replaced the magsafe jack
with a good one and put it back together... dim green light again. Also during this time I
replaced both RAM chips with good working ram chips and still no dice.

Now for the question: Any ideas? lol

Thanks in advance, and before anyone says it, there isn't a genius bar within 2 hours of me
so that is out of the question.

Thanks!

 

[NT1440]

Dim green almost always means the magsafe charger itself is dying. It will act sporadically (working in one unit but not another). I ran into this just yesterday at work. The client thought he had a dead battery, but I plugged in the magsafe to find a dim green light.

I plugged the same magsafe into another unit and it worked, but when putting it back into the client's machine it didn't. I grabbed a new charger, problem solved.

I don't want to say that's definitely what's happening, but ANY time you have a dim green light on a magsafe charger, the first place to look is the charger itself.

 

[dgohn1231]

Dim green almost always means the magsafe charger itself is dying. It will act sporadically (working in one unit but not another). I ran into this just yesterday at work. The client thought he had a dead battery, but I plugged in the magsafe to find a dim green light.

I plugged the same magsafe into another unit and it worked, but when putting it back into the client's machine it didn't. I grabbed a new charger, problem solved.

I don't want to say that's definitely what's happening, but ANY time you have a dim green light on a magsafe charger, the first place to look is the charger itself.

My fault for not listing all of the troubleshooting I performed. I did use a different good working almost brand new charger and same result. Thanks for the reply though!

 

[TheIguana]

My fault for not listing all of the troubleshooting I performed. I did use a different good working almost brand new charger and same result. Thanks for the reply though!

Could be the MagSafe contacts on your MBP and the adapter. Have you tried cleaning them?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1713?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

http://superuser.com/questions/111705/why-does-my-magsafe-power-connector-only-work-one-way-round

Could be an issue withe Power Management System - you could try a reset of those via reseting the PRAM/NVRAM.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

 

[dgohn1231]

Could be the MagSafe contacts on your MBP and the adapter. Have you tried cleaning them?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1713?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

http://superuser.com/questions/111705/why-does-my-magsafe-power-connector-only-work-one-way-round

Could be an issue withe Power Management System - you could try a reset of those via reseting the PRAM/NVRAM.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

Yeah when I disassembled it the first time I cleaned all of the contacts and connectors on the board.

 

[dgohn1231]

Quick update... I just plugged a charger into a macbook that was only about half charged so it went solid green then orange like normal, unplugged it while it was still orange and plugged it into the dead laptop and it went orange on that laptop.. still not powering on. It seems the dead macbook is causing the charger to just mimic whatever light was last on

 

[DeltaMac]

If you have swapped with a known good adapter, and get same problem,
And, if you have also changed the Magsafe board (some call it the DC-in board), and no change, then you have a bad charging circuit on the logic board, or the battery is failing.

Can you get the MBPro to power up with NO battery installed?
Obviously, you can't unplug from the adapter - but if it works happily without a battery, then you may have a faulty battery.

If you get similar bad results (won't power on, etc) without a battery installed, and you know you have a good Magsafe adapter, and your internal Magsafe board is new, then you have only one item left. (logic board)

 

[dgohn1231]

If you have swapped with a known good adapter, and get same problem,
And, if you have also changed the Magsafe board (some call it the DC-in board), and no change, then you have a bad charging circuit on the logic board, or the battery is failing.

Can you get the MBPro to power up with NO battery installed?
Obviously, you can't unplug from the adapter - but if it works happily without a battery, then you may have a faulty battery.

If you get similar bad results (won't power on, etc) without a battery installed, and you know you have a good Magsafe adapter, and your internal Magsafe board is new, then you have only one item left. (logic board)

Thanks for the reply. As I stated originally, I disconnected the battery and plugged in the charger and still no power on and still dim green light. As for the charging circuit how hard is that to repair? I am quite good with soldering but does it need a reflow or can it be repaired with soldering a new one in?

 

[DeltaMac]

I doubt that your soldering skills will be any help, unfortunately.
If you have eliminated everything else, then you are left with the power/charging circuit on the logic board.
It's not a replaceable chip, as far as I know - and I've not heard of any reflow fix, such as for video problems.

Fix by replacing the logic board.

(If you did not use a NEW magsafe board - a used one might have a similar intermittent connection problem, such as you have now. Much easier, and cheaper, is to try ANOTHER magsafe board.)

 

[dgohn1231]

While I'm sure that is possible I doubt that's the issue. I've put a multimeter on it and it's reading input voltage just the same as a functioning one and I've swapped back and forth the dc jack into other working macbook and the only one that has the problem is on the dead one. Looks like I have a logic board issue, which I was fairly sure the problem was but was hoping someone could provide some inside knowledge on how to repair the logic board. I'll leave this open for a bit longer in hopes that someone with extensive knowledge in logic board repair stumbles upon it. Thanks everyone.

 

[NT1440]

While I'm sure that is possible I doubt that's the issue. I've put a multimeter on it and it's reading input voltage just the same as a functioning one and I've swapped back and forth the dc jack into other working macbook and the only one that has the problem is on the dead one. Looks like I have a logic board issue, which I was fairly sure the problem was but was hoping someone could provide some inside knowledge on how to repair the logic board. I'll leave this open for a bit longer in hopes that someone with extensive knowledge in logic board repair stumbles upon it. Thanks everyone.

Apple's own documentation (GSX) says that it requires a logic board replacement.

 

[dgohn1231]

Apple's own documentation (GSX) says that it requires a logic board replacement.

Thanks