Reviving a 2010 15 inch MacBook Pro

[csonni]

Pulled out a 2010 MBP that my son left behind which started giving him trouble a number of years ago. Charged up the battery and actually had the fan spin up but no display and no keyboard function. He said he woke one morning and found it non-functional with no real reason that he could think of. Power button doesn't seem to function as expected, either. Without a lot more detail, can anyone help with where to begin? I had replaced the hard drive for him with an SSD before it all began. I will be opening it up but aren't sure where to begin....maybe replace the SSD? But even with a bad drive, wouldn't something show on the display?

 

[glenthompson]

Have you tried a SMC and NVRAM reset? That would be first thing. Connect to an external display to see if the screen is bad. Pull the SSD and install in external enclosure to see if it’s readable. While open, check the logic board for water damage.

 

[csonni]

Have you tried a SMC and NVRAM reset? That would be first thing. Connect to an external display to see if the screen is bad. Pull the SSD and install in external enclosure to see if it’s readable. While open, check the logic board for water damage.

Thanks for that advice. I believe we tried both those resets 2 yrs ago. Will pull the drive and check for damage.

 

[CoastalOR]

The 2010 have a known capacitor problem can cause problems with the function of the dGPU during startup than prevent completing startup checks. Some symptoms can be black screen and no keyboard responses since startup fails the hardware checks.

Here is a long thread that you may find interesting and useful:

GPU Kernel Panic in mid-2010; what's the best fix?

Over the past several months I've been getting kernel panics due to the graphics card, resulting in my mid-2010 MBP crashing. It's been getting progressively worse, something several times a day. (I missed the recall/repair program by a week because the d*cks at Apple never notified me that...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[theMarble]

The 2010 have a known capacitor problem can cause problems with the function of the dGPU

Yes, I think a few people can fix it but you can buy new boards for pretty cheap IIRC

 

[csonni]

Removed the SSD and it mounts fine in my external enclosure.

 

[csonni]

Pulled the battery and reinstalled. I'm now booted off the external drive with no internal drive. Keyboard is not working other than the QWERTY and U keys as well as number 1. My son forgot his password, so, I logged in as Guest and got the Bluetooth keyboard paired. Can’t seem to enter the wrong password to bring up the reset request, so, I’m thinking of installing High Sierra on the external drive and start over. If all is well, I may reinstall the SSD into the MBP and try it out again. If no boot, should I assume it’s the SATA cable?

 

[csonni]

Starting to think it may be more than 1 issue at hand. Put the SSD in the MBP and no boot...no power at all. Put it back in the enclosure, still nothing. That one time it did boot, the MBP was nice and snappy, at least in the Guest account. Not sure why pressing the power button does nothing. Maybe I need to try to remove the battery and reinstall again? I did remove and reinstall it just before it booted up.

 

[csonni]

Sure enough. Removing an reinstalling the battery did it. As soon as I plugged in the external drive, the MBP powered up. Hmmm.