MacBook Pro Late 2008 15" No Power

[MultiFinder17]

I've got a bit of a conundrum on my hands today. I came back from Spring Break this morning and started getting my classroom back up and running. Before break, I took the 15" Late 2008 MBP that I use to remote into other computers off its cart, shut it down, unplugged it, and stuck it in a drawer for the week. Little bugger has worked fine for years now. When I put it back this morning, no power. MagSafe light turns on, battery lights on the side turn on to show that the battery is full, but there are zero signs of life from it. I pulled the battery and power, held down the power button for a while since that's jostled it back to life before, no dice. Pulled the back off and tried the power pads on the logic board, no dice. Pulled the RAM, no dice. Little bugger is seemingly completely dead to the world. Same difference with and without its battery, which does work fine.

Machine was working fine before break, and all it did over break was sit in a drawer in an air-conditioned classroom.

Any ideas where would be best to go from here? I haven't ever had this little bugger just up and die this hardcore before.

 

[MultiFinder17]

Welp I feel stupid. I ganked the battery, then got distracted by helping kids with stuff for a period. Came back, tossed the battery back in and she fired right up. I kept telling it that 15 years was far too young to give up on itself!

Might be a stupid question, but any idea why that worked when other resets (PRAM, etc.) didn't work?

 

[avz]

Welp I feel stupid. I ganked the battery, then got distracted by helping kids with stuff for a period. Came back, tossed the battery back in and she fired right up. I kept telling it that 15 years was far too young to give up on itself!

Might be a stupid question, but any idea why that worked when other resets (PRAM, etc.) didn't work?

View attachment 2176262

I am suspecting that your battery is getting close to the end of its useful lifecycle/getting swollen. It is not very easy to notice a slight battery swelling.

 

[MultiFinder17]

I am suspecting that your battery is getting close to the end of its useful lifecycle/getting swollen. It is not very easy to notice a slight battery swelling.

Oddly the battery lasts quite a while - it'll run for a couple hours still, and it's in fantastic health. I just pulled it out and measured it, and it's flat as a board. I'm gonna keep noodling with it, but I think I can rule out the battery for the time being.

 

[floral]

Oddly the battery lasts quite a while - it'll run for a couple hours still, and it's in fantastic health. I just pulled it out and measured it, and it's flat as a board. I'm gonna keep noodling with it, but I think I can rule out the battery for the time being.

View attachment 2176304

What a beast... I'd expect it to have like 60% battery capacity right now.

 

[avz]

Oddly the battery lasts quite a while - it'll run for a couple hours still, and it's in fantastic health. I just pulled it out and measured it, and it's flat as a board. I'm gonna keep noodling with it, but I think I can rule out the battery for the time being.

View attachment 2176304

The battery stats do look very well indeed. I am wondering if you actually put the battery under the load like running Unigine Heaven with full brightness on? You can let it run until the battery is completely depleted and the Mac turns off. This will be a calibration of sorts, and upon completion the battery health can either go up or down.

 

[Hrududu]

Might just have been a little hiccup in the SMC. You did the conventional SMC reset (pull battery, hold down power button, reinstall battery) but perhaps leaving it completely disconnected from battery & power for a longer period helped drain any residual "juice" and gave the SMC a chance to fully reset. The chip can fail, but you don't see that too often.

 

[MultiFinder17]

What a beast... I'd expect it to have like 60% battery capacity right now.

The battery stats do look very well indeed. I am wondering if you actually put the battery under the load like running Unigine Heaven with full brightness on? You can let it run until the battery is completely depleted and the Mac turns off. This will be a calibration of sorts, and upon completion the battery health can either go up or down.

This battery has impressed for years now - I got this machine from my old roommate, and he'd had it sitting in his garage for several years unused. I was amazed that it worked at all, let alone that it was fully functional with hours of life in it.

Fingers crossed this was just a weird glitch with the SMC - I was messing with it later in the day and power cycled it to the same result. Again, took the battery out and left it out for a bit, put it back in and it fired up just fine. Maybe it's just old and crotchety as it starts to push towards 20?

 

[avz]

Again, took the battery out and left it out for a bit, put it back in and it fired up just fine.

I once bought a perfectly good 13 inch MBP 2010 for $45 that was not turning on and found that it has a swollen battery. I replaced the battery and it was working great. The problem with old MacBooks at this stage is that a good quality battery replacements are more expensive than MacBooks themselves and probably not worth anybody's while in a long run.
Considering that your battery was manufactured in October 2012 it is not exactly "very old" but it is getting there and this is why I suggested to put it under some real stress.

 

[MultiFinder17]

I once bought a perfectly good 13 inch MBP 2010 for $45 that was not turning on and found that it has a swollen battery. I replaced the battery and it was working great. The problem with old MacBooks at this stage is that a good quality battery replacements are more expensive than MacBooks themselves and probably not worth anybody's while in a long run.
Considering that your battery was manufactured in October 2012 it is not exactly "very old" but it is getting there and this is why I suggested to put it under some real stress.

I took your advice and decided to run Unigine Heaven on it. Screen brightness on highest and on battery power, it chugged through it at all of 3-4 FPS for a bit over an hour and a half before it finally pooped out. None too shabby a showing for this old beast!

FWIW I do have it fixed on the 9400M and never touching the 9600M GT. Not sure why the GPU shows at 129C, I can assure you that's not accurate given that it started there and never changed. Even so, that's not a terrible showing for an 11-year-old battery in a 15-year-old laptop

After the full drain "calibration" it's showing at 87.7% health

 

[avz]

I took your advice and decided to run Unigine Heaven on it. Screen brightness on highest and on battery power, it chugged through it at all of 3-4 FPS for a bit over an hour and a half before it finally pooped out. None too shabby a showing for this old beast!

FWIW I do have it fixed on the 9400M and never touching the 9600M GT. Not sure why the GPU shows at 129C, I can assure you that's not accurate given that it started there and never changed. Even so, that's not a terrible showing for an 11-year-old battery in a 15-year-old laptop

After the full drain "calibration" it's showing at 87.7% health

View attachment 2176838 View attachment 2176857

This is just goes to show us that there is no real alternative to the even 10 year old original Apple battery. An expensive $100 replacement battery is unlikely to have this kind of performance even 3-5 years down the road. I believe that the "calibration" that you did will help to make sure that there will not be a sudden shutdown at 3-5% remaning battery power as your battery health is now showing more accurate number.

 

[MultiFinder17]

This is just goes to show us that there is no real alternative to the even 10 year old original Apple battery. An expensive $100 replacement battery is unlikely to have this kind of performance even 3-5 years down the road. I believe that the "calibration" that you did will help to make sure that there will not be a sudden shutdown at 3-5% remaning battery power as your battery health is now showing more accurate number.

Poor beast never gets run on its battery anyway, so eh. But still good to know that it can do a couple hours should it need to do so! Honestly I'm mildly tempted to sell its battery given that I never use it on battery and those things sell for a pretty penny if they work.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Honestly I'm mildly tempted to sell its battery given that I never use it on battery and those things sell for a pretty penny if they work.

Without the battery the CPU will throttle.

 

[MultiFinder17]

Without the battery the CPU will throttle.

True, but it's basically used to run a couple screen sharing sessions so even with a throttled C2D it'd still do well enough. But I'll probably end up keeping it just because it might be handy eventually.

 

[jaybarbelo]

I've got a bit of a conundrum on my hands today. I came back from Spring Break this morning and started getting my classroom back up and running. Before break, I took the 15" Late 2008 MBP that I use to remote into other computers off its cart, shut it down, unplugged it, and stuck it in a drawer for the week. Little bugger has worked fine for years now. When I put it back this morning, no power. MagSafe light turns on, battery lights on the side turn on to show that the battery is full, but there are zero signs of life from it. I pulled the battery and power, held down the power button for a while since that's jostled it back to life before, no dice. Pulled the back off and tried the power pads on the logic board, no dice. Pulled the RAM, no dice. Little bugger is seemingly completely dead to the world. Same difference with and without its battery, which does work fine.

Machine was working fine before break, and all it did over break was sit in a drawer in an air-conditioned classroom.

Any ideas where would be best to go from here? I haven't ever had this little bugger just up and die this hardcore before.

View attachment 2176226

Warm it up, then try booting.

 

[MultiFinder17]

Poor thing ended up continuing its unhappy streak over the summer when I brought it home, so I've had to replace it in my classroom

With a 2011 15"! The performance boost is welcome given how much I use it, and the machine I have has the high-res screen which makes its main job of screen sharing sessions even better!

 

[bobesch]

FWIW I do have it fixed on the 9400M and never touching the 9600M GT.

How did you manage to fix it on either GPU?

I'm having trouble with an early2008 2,8GHz MBP5.1
First problem was, that it didn't want to boot at all with just showing a black screen (can't remember about any sounds or lights ...)
Then surprisingly I was able to boot it up again but since it does happen to freeze irregularly after some time of usage.
Don't know, if it's a problem with a defective 9600M GT but after some web-search I couldn't find out a way, how to sort the problem out ...
With the early2008 MBP4,1 (8600M GT) a drop of PCIe-Lane-Width from x16 to lower values would show a faulty and failing GPU, but with this MBP5,1 the 9600M GT shows the normal x16 PCIe-Lane-Width

Since the 2,8GHz model still runs OCLP/Mojave&Ventura decently (with some restrictions: no Apple-Maps/TV.App) I just don't want to let it go ...
... even if I was lucky to get hands on a working "early2009" 2,93GHz MBP5,1 with revised GPU to swap logicboards
(That MBP came in for just 40 bucks because of a shattered display; but with a pristine power-adapter - one of those sturdy ones with the T-shaped MagSafe adapter.)

Edit:
Sorry about this my posting.
Stupid me - found out, that there was a discussion about this specific problem on full extend here ...

 

[MultiFinder17]

How did you manage to fix it on either GPU?

I'm having trouble with an early2008 2,8GHz MBP5.1
First problem was, that it didn't want to boot at all with just showing a black screen (can't remember about any sounds or lights ...)
Then surprisingly I was able to boot it up again but since it does happen to freeze irregularly after some time of usage.
Don't know, if it's a problem with a defective 9600M GT but after some web-search I couldn't find out a way, how to sort the problem out ...
With the early2008 MBP4,1 (8600M GT) a drop of PCIe-Lane-Width from x16 to lower values would show a faulty and failing GPU, but with this MBP5,1 the 9600M GT shows the normal x16 PCIe-Lane-Width

Since the 2,8GHz model still runs OCLP/Mojave&Ventura decently (with some restrictions: no Apple-Maps/TV.App) I just don't want to let it go ...
... even if I was lucky to get hands on a working "early2009" 2,93GHz MBP5,1 with revised GPU to swap logicboards
(That MBP came in for just 40 bucks because of a shattered display; but with a pristine power-adapter - one of those sturdy ones with the T-shaped MagSafe adapter.)

Edit:
Sorry about this my posting.
Stupid me - found out, that there was a discussion about this specific problem on full extend here ...

If I recall, this is the method I used. It's persistent across reboots and is only reset if you reset the NVRAM.

 

[B S Magnet]

If I recall, this is the method I used. It's persistent across reboots and is only reset if you reset the NVRAM.

Correct me if I missed something, but I think that method works for MBPs with AMD GPUs, whereas the late 2008 MBP5,1 shipped with the Nvidia 9x00 series.

Ordinarily, I’d think it wouldn’t matter, but then I remember those were some of the models and revisions which also shipped with the Nvidia chipset (which came with its own quirks, some being outlined by dosdude1). There might be peculiarities around nvram-related alterations at that lower level.