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Unresponsive power button but my Mac turns on using internal pads

Macbook Pro 15" (mid 07)

First of all.. Hello guys!

I've been having a problem with my Macbook Pro 2007. I bought the machine as faulty as the screen was black but I could hear the chime.. it turned out that all I had to do was replace the RAM (lucky me? well not really).

It came without a hard drive, so I ordered a 250GB hdd which came today. I'm usually quite handy with repairs, apart from today it seems! I opened the Mac up to fit the hard drive, but I think I've clumsily touched some part of the board as when I reassembled the Mac the power button no longer turns the machine on!

I can boot it up by touching the power pads on the board with a Jewelers screwdriver but it then gives me a black screen again (like old times). The power button won't shut the Mac down, either, so I'm left with a paperweight really! Maybe if the power button was working I could try th SMC reset.

My question is really - is my keyboard faulty? I didn't physically damage it. Is my board dead? I doubt it because the fans spin up, hard drive makes usual noise, USB ports charge my phone.

What could the problem be? I don't want to spend money without absolutely knowing the problem you see. If you've made it this far... Thanks for reading this monstrous story!

One more thing worth noting: I've actually turned the machine on once or twice using the power button (from well over 50 attempts) but again, the power button wouldn't let me shutdown either time.

Answer this question I have this problem too

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Hopefully I've gotten the correct model here. Double check me by plugging in the last three digits of your serial number into here: EveryMac. To find your serial number it will be in the battery compartment behind the battery.

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You do need to be careful in these older systems to make sure the drive you get is workable. You see these old systems only supported SATA I (1.5 Gb/s) drives. So you'll need to check the drive spec sheet to see if it is SATA I or has a jumper to set it to SATA I. Some drives do offer auto sensing (like Seagate's SSHD drive). Even here you'll likely need to make sure the systems firmware is up to date.

As to your problem when you put in the RAM the first time you got a blinking question mark on the internal display correct? If you did then I suspect the ribbon cable got dislodged that is the cable just in front of the fan unit.

As to the keyboard it to has a fragile ribbon cable & connector that can get damaged if not careful. See if you nicked the cable or the connector is not seated.

You may want to try plugging in an external display to see if the desktop shows up on it. Or, you could try shining a flashlight though the Apple logo on the lid to see if the desktop image is present that way (blinking question mark). Let us know what you find.

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Thanks for your reply Dan.

To answer the question regarding RAM, I did get a question mark flashing above a folder, but I believe that was due to not having a hard drive at the time, which obviously resulted in having no OS.

The keyboard is a tough one because I know that I was very careful in removing it from the board. As I say, I may have touched the board with my hand, could that have resulted in shorting something out and maybe refusing to send power to the keyboard?

I'm pretty optimistic that an SMC or a PRAM reset would solve the blank screen issue but obviously with the lack of keyboard I'm restricted from either at the moment.

As a side note, too - the hard drive is compatible, I'm pretty certain on that. It was from eBay and the description stressed that it was Apple Mac compatible and even stated my model as well.

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A1226 is my model number by the way.

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I agree with Dan, reseat the keyboard ribbon cable. Also try moving the screen back and forth a little and see if it comes up. The serial number is located in the battery compartment. There are lots of different A 1226 models and we need the specific one as there are known issues on different machines.

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My serial number is W87247LMX92, feel free to double check that it's Macbook that you're thinking it is, cheers.

I have reattached the ribbon a couple of times to no avail. I'm thinking there's been a short somewhere on the board.

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Okay quick update - with the keyboard connected to the logic board I applied slight pressure onto the ribbon connection and was able to power up with the power button, but obviously I can't do this all the time to get the keyboard working. Not sure if this is good news or bad!

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David Leese will be eternally grateful.
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