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Repair guides and disassembly information for the 14-inch MacBook Pro released in January of 2023, featuring Apple-designed M2 Pro and M2 Max SoCs.

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Will Not Turn on but will Chime

My Macbook suddenly quit. I've tried the fixes on the Apple site, but it's not clear what works for the M-series chips and what works for Intel chips.

The machine will chime. I can wait a few minutes and press a key, and it will chime again. Sometimes the chime is cut short by a staticy noise.

I think the GPU died, as I was having screen freezes during a Zoom call earlier in the day.

For the M-series Macs, I found guidance that said to hold the power button for ten seconds, wait, and repeat until it boots up.

I appreciate any advice!

Answer this question I have this problem too

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Compared to some of the other answers on here, this probably sounds stupid, but have you tried an external monitor?

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@fixer85785 - Not a bad idea! But lack keyboard backlight aims to a logic board power issue within the backlight logic. That of course is based on the new info Chris gave us.

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That sounds Iike a BIOS beep, possibly (which does indeed usually mean something is broken or disconnected)

^ignore this part

Based on my understanding of modern Mac(s), the GPU can’t suddenly “die” on its own, since the GPU (and most of the other components) are actually just one large chip (System on [a] Chip). While the GPU segment may be toast, you can’t really replace just the GPU, and would have to replace the entire SoC (if not the entire board).

Also, is there only a single chime? Does it repeat? Does the screen backlight turn on?

(Sorry about the unhelpful answer, I’m sure one of the Mac users will write a few paragraphs featuring detailed boardviews, schematics, and troubleshooting steps.)

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A single chime (bong) is normal. A EFI (Mac’s don’t technically don’t have a BIOS) error would be a 3 long then 3 short beep code, but that was with the Intel CPU based systems.

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It's one startup chime, and that's it. No backlight and no keyboard lights.

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The M series SoC’s don’t have independent CPU and GPU chips like some of the older MacBook systems have.

Sadly it does sound like a deeper logic board issue.

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And since everything's on the board, there isn't a way to save the hard drive data unless I find someone with mad soldering skills?

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@cs_harris - Sadly that tends to be the case. You might be able to connect a second Mac to your system then using Target Disk Mode gain access to your drive via the other Mac Transfer files between two Mac computers using target disk mode

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I would recommend trying DFU revive using another MacBook.

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Christopher Sean Harris will be eternally grateful.
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