Cutting straight to the chase. A few months ago, I procured a 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro that was being thrown out. No signs of water damage were evident when opening up the system, aside from dust buildup that was brushed off. The keyboard and trackpad are broken, but it remained usable as a desktop computer given the system was otherwise completely operational. Now, even that is no longer the case, and the laptop is seemingly in a braindead state now.
Given the recent loss of support for the latest version of macOS (Ventura), the 6-year-old age of the computer, and the general availability of the same working model or better for about the same price Apple would likely charge for a repair on a used market, I am not seeking a repair for this machine if it remotely involves costs, in which case, I would likely shelve it. It may be worth fixing for someone else, but it personally just would not be economically viable for me. However, it's worth a shot sharing the symptoms of the machine to see if any exact issues and possible appropriate repairs can be identified.
Symptoms:
- Upon pressing the power button, the boot chime sounds faintly.
- Upon plugging in a power supply, the charging chime sounds faintly.
- The force-touch trackpad, albeit inoperable at the time of acquisition of the machine, always provided haptic feedback at one level of pressure even though it didn't track or respond to gestures. This remained the case, and it does continue to respond to pressure.
- In spite of these subtle signs of life, neither the display nor touch bar show anything. Nothing shows on an external display when connected.
- The top center of the chassis heats up rather quickly, in spite of no visible activity.
- The backlit keyboard and mouse I attach to the machine light up, indicative that power is being delivered to them, however keyboard combinations to reset the NVRAM/PRAM and SMC yield no reactions from the machine. It is difficult to surmise whether this is due to failure of the keyboard to be registered in time when powering on the machine before the opportunity to reset the SMC and NVRAM/PRAM passes, or if the logic board is simply at an inoperable state that renders these attempts pointless. As stated before, the built-in keyboard is dead, and is not an option here.
Before onset:
I updated the machine to the latest non-beta version of macOS Monterey, 12.5.1, hours before discovery of the aforementioned symptoms. The update ran successfully, and I was able to use the machine in a desktop orientation for a few hours before putting it to sleep in particular (I did not shut it down). Everything was disconnected, and the machine was left on a tabletop for roughly 3 hours. Once revisiting the machine, I discovered the machine in the described state.
That's about all I have for what I recall doing prior to the onset of the malfunction, as well as what I observe of the symptoms. It is beyond me what the cause of malfunction is, and I know it could be a plethora of things, ranging from corrupted firmware to a logic board failure regarding a major component like the CPU. It seems odd to me that there are subtle signs of life, yet the machine is fundamentally inoperable.
This is not my main machine, and though I will be left disappointed, it won't be a huge loss for me if it turns out nothing can be done within the confines of my home. But as I've said before, it's worth a shot seeing if I can get some help pinpointing what happened with the context I've provided, if that's possible.
Given the recent loss of support for the latest version of macOS (Ventura), the 6-year-old age of the computer, and the general availability of the same working model or better for about the same price Apple would likely charge for a repair on a used market, I am not seeking a repair for this machine if it remotely involves costs, in which case, I would likely shelve it. It may be worth fixing for someone else, but it personally just would not be economically viable for me. However, it's worth a shot sharing the symptoms of the machine to see if any exact issues and possible appropriate repairs can be identified.
Symptoms:
- Upon pressing the power button, the boot chime sounds faintly.
- Upon plugging in a power supply, the charging chime sounds faintly.
- The force-touch trackpad, albeit inoperable at the time of acquisition of the machine, always provided haptic feedback at one level of pressure even though it didn't track or respond to gestures. This remained the case, and it does continue to respond to pressure.
- In spite of these subtle signs of life, neither the display nor touch bar show anything. Nothing shows on an external display when connected.
- The top center of the chassis heats up rather quickly, in spite of no visible activity.
- The backlit keyboard and mouse I attach to the machine light up, indicative that power is being delivered to them, however keyboard combinations to reset the NVRAM/PRAM and SMC yield no reactions from the machine. It is difficult to surmise whether this is due to failure of the keyboard to be registered in time when powering on the machine before the opportunity to reset the SMC and NVRAM/PRAM passes, or if the logic board is simply at an inoperable state that renders these attempts pointless. As stated before, the built-in keyboard is dead, and is not an option here.
Before onset:
I updated the machine to the latest non-beta version of macOS Monterey, 12.5.1, hours before discovery of the aforementioned symptoms. The update ran successfully, and I was able to use the machine in a desktop orientation for a few hours before putting it to sleep in particular (I did not shut it down). Everything was disconnected, and the machine was left on a tabletop for roughly 3 hours. Once revisiting the machine, I discovered the machine in the described state.
That's about all I have for what I recall doing prior to the onset of the malfunction, as well as what I observe of the symptoms. It is beyond me what the cause of malfunction is, and I know it could be a plethora of things, ranging from corrupted firmware to a logic board failure regarding a major component like the CPU. It seems odd to me that there are subtle signs of life, yet the machine is fundamentally inoperable.
This is not my main machine, and though I will be left disappointed, it won't be a huge loss for me if it turns out nothing can be done within the confines of my home. But as I've said before, it's worth a shot seeing if I can get some help pinpointing what happened with the context I've provided, if that's possible.
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