need help with a mac book pro repair

[Pob255]

Ok I feel dirty posting in a mac area.
I'm a pc person always have been, however we've got some mac book pro's at work and one of them is dead.
Refuses to power on, when you plug in the power lead the led on it doesn't come on.
Remove the battery the light on the power connector will flash green.
Tried a different charger same, tried a different battery, same.
Checked there's no damage to the laptop power socket, nope.

So I've hit a wall and the only option I can see now is send it off for repairs, but too whom?

It's out of warranty, btw, person who got these didn't think about things like extended warranties/care packs (mac's never break )

So what now? find someone to take it too an apple store?
Can anyone suggest a good company who I can send this off to for repairs?
Have anyone else had a simular situation and can give me a rough idea of the cost?

[Biscuit]

Might be useful to have the age and model (unibody?)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It could be heat related. Some of the early MacBook Pros had poor QC due to the result of the OEM using a large amount of thermal compound.

[Pob255]

2009 was the year we got them, I'll have to double check the laptop, brb

[spoon_]

You can still take it back to Apple Store iirc and they will fix it for you. Its a chargeable service as its out of warranty but they should be able to do it.

In Tottenham Court Road Apple got a reseller which will fix this for you as well:

http://www.squaregroup.co.uk/

Square’s London premises can be found at 78 New Oxford Street, WC1A 1HB, a short walk from Tottenham Court Road and Holborn tube stations and includes a state-of-the-art hands-on training suite.

If you look at the insides of MBP its a PC, Intel/NVidia all over the place, not much Apple in there...

[Biscuit]

If you look at the insides of MBP its a PC, Intel/NVidia all over the place, not much Apple in there...

I think Foxconn do a lot of the internals

[Pob255]

Oh there's no apple internals, they are strictly design only, and that's more function and looks design, not actual hardware design.
But it's still a laptop, so all non-standard except for the memory, processor and harddrive.

My guess is a fault with the power circuit on the motherboard, which will probably mean a new motherboard

[Biscuit]

My guess is a fault with the power circuit on the motherboard, which will probably mean a new motherboard

Or logicboard... as apple call them

Could be the DC board?

You could probably do the work yoourself if you are feeling brave

http://www.ifixit.com/Device/MacBook...and_Early_2009

http://www.thebookyard.com/

[Pob255]

Nah it's too much hassle, just wondering if takeing it to the apple store was the best bet or will that be overcharged and you can get a far better deal contacting an offical repair center directly?

personally I'm not massively fussed, this was another one of those it purchases that happened without us the itsupport staff knowing anything about it.

[Pob255]

Ta Biscuit, that first link is the mac I'm looking for
that's a very nice instruction set.

[kmac]

Doing the work yourself is not the issue. It costs almost the same as getting new kit to buy replacement logic boards - that's if you can find any to be bought

[Gordy]

I had a similar issues with a mbp and it was the dc board. A trip to ebay sourced a replacement very cheaply. If however the battery not working indicates the logic board is the issue. That's not cheap to fix.

Given its age though it maybe worth a trip to the apple store to get them to fix it. As the motherboard would be in the batch of faulty ones with nVidia issues. They may fix for free.

[Biscuit]

No that wasn't the unibody ones, it was the ones prior to it - i know because i had one

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Given its age though it maybe worth a trip to the apple store to get them to fix it. As the motherboard would be in the batch of faulty ones with nVidia issues. They may fix for free.

I remember getting a G4 eMac repaired after I told them about the US recall. OTH,since it was kept very quiet in the UK quite a few people ended chucking their ones away!!

[TheAnimus]

Yes there was an issue with the nVidia chips heat causing little beads to crack. A quick bit of time on the hot air reworking station would often give a few more months life.

As spoon recomended one of the indie places might be worth a trip, a few of them have proper reworking stations so would just do that for a small fee, might be worth a look.

Also worth noting that this effected many brands of laptops, its also interesting to note which admitted and did a recall.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Pob should check if the US did a recall or notice on the particular model and if this is the case Apple will probably repair the laptop for free.