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Charger shows green light, MacBook doesn't power on

Hi everyone, new to this forum.

I managed to get a MacBook Pro 15” Retina Mid 2015 for dirt cheap. It will be delivered somewhere this week. It’s missing a charger and the SSD. I already have a charger which I can use. The MacBook is the i7 2.2GHZ with Intel Iris graphics by the way.

The previous owner told me the laptop has a big issue: it’s not turning on anymore. One of his kids broke the keyboard (by pulling keys out, lol) so he tried replacing it. After replacing it with a new keyboard, the MacBook wouldn’t turn on anymore. That’s why he listed it for sale. When he is plugging in the charger, the charger light is green.

I know buying this is quite the gamble, as there can probably a lot off issues that can cause this. I don’t mind: for me this is just a learning experience.

I’m wondering what my first steps would be when I get this MacBook delivered. I’m thinking about trying these things:

  1. See if I can hear/see the fans run
  2. SMC reset
  3. PRAM reset
  4. I can try to hook it up to an external display
  5. I can try to disconnect the battery and then try to turn it on with the charger connected

Does this make sense? Any other thing I can try? This would be my first MacBook repair.

Oh and do I need an SSD already to test if I can get it to power on? Or can I first try without and buy/install it as soon as I confirm it works again?

Thanks a lot! Kind regards,

Jeroen

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Using an Apple USB keyboard maybe needed here if the keyboard is messed up. Having a external drive which is setup as a bootable running macOS Sierra would be useful USB or Thunderbolt.

For now with no drive using the either the internal or external keyboard see if you can get into the onboard diagnostics using the D key at startup.

To setup a bootable drive download the OS installer from here How to get old versions of macOS and follow this guide How to create a bootable macOS Sierra installer drive You only need a 32 MB USB thumb drive which is first formatted with GUID and a Journaled file system.

Let us know how it goes.

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25 Comments:

Awesome! Thanks. Great tip about the external keyboard. Would I be able to connect a Magic Keyboard to it? I think I should be able to, right? Since it has a lightning to USB cable.

For sure I will let you know how it goes :) Excited to try this out!

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@jeroenverweij - I would stick with the USB connection. Depending on what the system was setup with (or working) a Bluetooth keyboard might not work.

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@danj sorry if I was unclear (not a native English speaker). I mean that I would put the lightning end of the cable in my keyboard and the USB end of the cable in my MacBook. That would mean the keyboard is connected by USB, right? Or am I missing something?

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@jeroenverweij - I've never gotten a clear answer from Apple if the Magic keyboards or Magic or Magic 2 Mouse/TrackPads are fully wired so it would also work as a USB input.

In truth it doesn't make sense (more complexity) to make them dual output (BT & USB). The fact you need to plug it in to charge doesn't mean the USB data lines are workable.

I still use older keyboards ;-} Give it a try can't hurt anything.

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@danj cool, thanks :)

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Jeroen Verweij will be eternally grateful.
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