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Released October 2008 / 2.4, 2.53, 2.66, 2.8 or 2.93 GHz Core 2 Duo Processor

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I think my motherboard died. How to confirm?

Happily using my venerable Macbook Pro when it froze. No kernel panic, just suddenly froze. Reset/PRAM/battery etc. Nothing sorted things out. It quickly became obvious it was quite poorly.

Got it to boot by taking the battery out, waiting an hour, then plugging in. Very erratic. After a few attempts got to desktop, but not much was working - no wifi/bluetooth and lots of stuff seemed missing.

Tried bootcamp - Windows 10 got half-way through loading then froze.

Back to OS X - struggled to get to desktop. Lots of freezing.

Previously working fine. No damage, very well looked-after. All up to date etc.

I can get a used A1286 logic board from ebay, but should I? Is there likely to be a simple fix (to a simple and obvious problem)? What do people think about a 10 year-old logic board? (I know I probably shouldn't get it a Christmas present).

Any help, comments, suggestions et al. welcome.

Thanks for reading!

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Besides the troubleshooting you already attempted I'd try to make sure the hard drive is in working order. Depending on the Os version you have installed you can try getting into recovery partition or try with the install disk and see if the boot drive works properly with disk utility. Getting a replacement board depends very much on your future expectations and needs..these Macs are surely dated but they still work nicely for most leisure needs and they are relatively easy and inexpensive to upgrade too.

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Thanks - good tip. I've already swapped the drive out, checked for shorts on the usb ports, checked for loose cables, and done all the trouble shooting I can find online.

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Philip Monk will be eternally grateful.
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