Ka Narsing passed me his dead 2006 Macbook Pro last week cause I told him I knew a guy that fixes MacBooks (I had my own Macbook Air repaired by him). I was planning to bring the thing to the guy but his quote was a little too high and Ka Narsing didn't think it's worth spending too much on reviving it. So with a nothing to lose mindset, I went and did what many others have done before me - cooked the Macbook.
The issue was the Macbook's NVidia video chip. The laptop was running fine, it powers up fine, I can hear the boot up chime, the caps lock responds to presses, and even the DVD is working. The only problem is that there's no display, just a blank screen, not even a backlit. Tried plugging to an external monitor but no signal either.
It actually was a known problem and Apple ordered a recall sometime back, where they replaced the logic boards free of charge, even for units out of warranty. Unfortunately though, we were too late. The recall ended in Dec 2012 so the only other option was to pay for a replacement, which would have cost at least $700.
I did some research and found many others having the some problem. A lot of the tech-savvy guys found that the problem was really just on the solders of the chip, and a simple remelting of the solders would actually do the trick. It can be done in three ways:
- Power on the Macbook then wrap it tightly in a quilt for about an hour and a half with it's bottom up. This overheats the laptop enough to melt the solders.
- Open up the laptop, use foils to protect the parts, then use a heat gun focused on the video chip.
- Open up the laptop piece by piece, remove the logic board, then cook that component in the oven for 7.5mins at 190deg C.
I thought solution 3 was the most practical, coz (1) i didn't want to overheat the laptop's hard disk, lcd, and other components, (2) I don't have a heat gun, and (3) I wanted to make sure I fix only the part that's broken.
And so I did, and lo and behold, a revived Macbook Pro!
Tested the laptop for a whole 24 hours and haven't encountered a problem yet. There were some software issues but they pre-date the video problem.
I'm bringing the laptop back to Ka Narsing on Saturday. I'm sure he'll be one happy customer.
