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Released April 2010 / 2.4, 2.53 GHz Core i5 or 2.66 GHz Core i7 Processors

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Question for pros: MacBook Pro only charges occasionally...

Hey guys,

I am suffering from the following problem:

background:

- after a water-spill, my macbook started showing problems with charging, which increased during the last 6 months to the point where the macbook is nearly unusable. It is a Macbook pro Mid 2010 15" model, battery has 1029 cycles, 85% health, 5868mAh capacity. If it does charge, or i run the macbook on battery when its fully charged, it works like a charm and runs for hours.

problem

- my macbook often fails to recognize the charger and is not charging even while being plugged in

- various problems occur when i plug in the charger, such as:

- charger not recognized (no light, not recognized, not charging)

- green light (not recognized)

- green light (recognized but not charging)

- orange light (but not recognized, or not charging; this one happens rarely)

- weak green light (not recognized)

it does work when:

Which problem occurs seems rather random. The funny thing is that my Macbook Pro will ALWAYS charge after i let the charger be connected for some time. THis can need up to days to happen, but it always does. Unfortunately, being unable to power up your macbook for two days renders it rather unusable.

How I tried to fix it

I tried to be thorough and tried everything i could think of:

- send it to Apple (water damage no warranty...)

- 100000 SMC resets, PRAM resets...

- firmware updates

- disconnecting battery 100 times

- three different MagSafe chargers

- 50 different sockets

- replaced the DC-IN board with a new one, no changes

- completely dismantled and cleaned logic board/macbook several times

help?

So guys, I am completely clueless what i should do next. The battery does not seem to be the issue, neither does the DC-in board, software/firmware... I would guess its the logic-board, which would be really bad.

So, if you got any ideas, I would be really glad to hear them!

Cheers, Wilks Lambda

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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I've got the exact same issue... Are you saying that the logic board could be repaired and I won't have to replace the whole thing?

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Chosen Solution

Repeated SMC resets and PRAM resets can damage the EFI - they are "power fixes" not "on going solutions"... You might try to reinstall the EFI firmware and lay off the thousands of SMC/PRAM resets. Otherwise IMHO a logic board replacement should solve your problem.

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Thanks for your reply first of all. I looked for firmware restoration files, but it seems that Apple did not release the specific files for my machine (6,2), and i already did the EFI and SMC updates. Unfortunately, the problems persisted even after these updates. Any other ideas maybe that do not involve replacing the logic board, which seems veeery costly at the moment?

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Honestly with water damage there's no telling what it could have damaged. My guess is that a couple capacitors are damaged on your logic board but I wouldn't be able to tell until I see it. With logic boards, the hard part is figuring out where the problem is. The easy part is fixing it.

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Thanks for your reply! As I am located in europe sending the logicboard seems rather impractical :). Is there any way for me to test or see which part of the logic board might be broken? What i really do not understand is that the macbook ALWAYS charges after I let it be connected to the charger for sometime. Why would it work not directly but after half an hour or a day connected to the charger? And why would it then suddenly loose connection? My very limited understanding of this kind of electronics would be 'works' vs. 'broken', but not something in between what it seems like now.

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Take a good picture under good lighting. Maybe I can spot something you missed

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