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Model A1286. Released February 2011 / 2.0, 2.2, or 2.3 GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7 Processor

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MacBook Pro starting up to black screen

I have an early 2011 MBP 17. I do not know much of the genesis of the machine because I bought it DOA.

It appears there was a slight liquid spill (sprite?) on the machine as the red dot in the center of the keyboard was barely red and the keyboard seemed sticky. So I figure it was a light spill or massive enough to remove the red ink. There is no sign however of the suspected soda pop in the logic board. I examined it with a magnifying glass before cleaning it with 99% pure alcohol and a microfiber cloth and it had no sign of contaminants.

Anyhow I replaced the keyboard with a cheap Chinese one and the MBP worked fine except that a couple of the number keys did not work. Replaced the keyboard again with a keyboard from the same place and and the control key did not work. Both times I used the MPB for about a week and she ran fine but would not sleep with the clamshell closed. But I could tell her to sleep.

I Ordered a used genuine keyboard and this one worked.

I rebuilt the mac enough to test it and all the keys worked fine. I finished screwing in the logic board and put the cover on and when she powered up she went into a startup chime loop. I held down the power button and turned it on again and she came up in a frozen grey apple screen with the spinning wheel frozen. Turned it off again and now I get no chimes the fans run, the light on the front lights solid and just a black screen.

Tried starting without the hard drive, ram, swapping ram etc to no avail.

It has seemed that the fans on the MBP start on their own and sometimes she will boot on her own.

I have done SMC and PRAM. I noticed that sometimes before the last keyboard I could get her to boot by removing the battery, magsafe and then proceeding.

Could the logic board be fried?

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Are you absolutely certain you put all the screws back in the same place? I think you may have shorted out something on reassembly. If none of the screws could have been mixed up double check your RAM - try one RAM slot at a time.

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90% certain. I screwed in the logic board to test it with about 5 torex screws, these are all the same size. The guards over the keyboard are torex mounting screws and the one over the hard drive cable is the small 0 Phillips. As for the case it is hard to get those wrong.

The power button has been actin erratically on every keyboard. Sometimes the she turns herself on by herself and sometimes you can hear the hard drive spin but the optical never gets the check and no turn on.

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High speed fans indicate sensor damage... default for bad heat sensor - run the fans high speed to save the CPU. Default for bad CPU same - run the fans full speed. Constant reboot points toward an extension/kernel panic... Try a "safe" (shift boot). Try booting from a different known good volume. External drive, optical drive, network boot or a target booted Mac. If none of those work you're most likely left with physical damage to the logic board. If one works see if you can boot into AHT and run it to see what errors pop up. (You may have to run AHT 2 or 3 times in a row.

SMC and PRAM resets are not "fixes" they are troubleshooting steps used at a specific time... not as an alternative for normal starts. They "factory reset" power management or base files like time, network etc. Sometimes a corrupt file in those specific functions can cause a boot failure, that's why a single reset is often advised. Too many resets can actually screw up a logic board.

The board was starting to go bad after the liquid spill. You cleaned it and found some problems but you must have missed some. Burn marks, corrosion, swollen components all indicate damage, and can be impossible to see without magnification.

Only you know how much time and $ you want to put into this repair.

You may have to part out the working parts of the box, or, replace the logic board.

If this Answer is helpful please remember to return and mark it Accepted.

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