SMC reset issues

[Marcus Allemann]

Good afternoon, hivemind! Here's something to chew in case any of you have some thoughts on possible solutions.

In short: my Macbook Pro does not recognise the battery (symbol has a cross through it), can not run without external power supply from magsafe cable, will not charge and will not SMC reset either manually (ctrl+option+shift+power method) or with the downloaded SMC firmware file through terminal.

The whole story: About a month ago there was a liquid spill in my backpack (soy sauce if you must know. the tastiest damage of all). Although my laptop and power supply were not saturated, I was wiping off the sauce off both. No immediate problems but within a week or so I noticed the magsafe power cable would sometimes not work immediately (after reconnecting or connecting first to another Macbook Pro and then back to mine, it would function with the green light again) and the taskbar shows no battery available.

I took it to the Apple store. They tested in the shop front and the test software showed everything running normally except the power of course.

So the techs took one look inside, discovered immediately there was possible liquid damage and instead of just possibly replacing the magsafe board/ akku, they charged me with the whole price of swapping out the entire logic board, magsafe board, battery even the casing (has a few dings in it from a hard life) costing almost the price of a brand new laptop @_@

After a while (2 weeks or so) I decided rather than simply forking out money and not having the time to track down a computer repair shop willing to have a crack at it I would have a look in on it myself and see what the damage was.

Sure there was some evidence of the spill on the battery case and some streaks on the underside of the battery (really minimal) but absolutely no signs of corrosion or ANYTHING on the logic board, magsafe board or any of the cable connections aside from some dust.

I dismantled the laptop carefully, cleaned the stains with a light brush and some isopropyl, checked all the connections, re-inserted the boards and closed everything up again.

Everything functions fine except the power!

I know from previous attempts on trying an SMC reset that apparently the SMC firmware version is false for the operating system/ macbook pro that I have (will clarify model and OS soon) but I don't know what the workaround is.

I have here a Macbook Pro 13inch (early 2011) Model A1278 to be more precise running OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 with the SMC version being 1.68f99

I have tried:

• Using different magsafe power supplies (no problem)
• Manual SMC reset (through keyboard, no response)
• From memory I tried re-installing the latest SMC version but encountered some kind of problem (would not install for one reason or another). I remember digging through a shitcreek of posts at the time on SMC bugs or incorrect versions but would appreciate more thorough advice if it's around here.
• Cleaned and checked all connections from the boards inside the macbook

I have yet to try the following:

• try to use my current battery in another Macbook
• try swapping my current battery with a new battery
• open up and see if there is liquid damage in the power supply of the cable (not the easiest to access -_-)
• formatting and re-installing the whole operating system
• take it into another computer repair shop and see if the can offer any other solution aside from swapping out the whole logic board (in which case I may as well consider upgrading my computer entirely).

Fan runs normally. Computer is not as peppy with speed as it was since 2011 (obviously could be for a number of reasons). Really EVERYTHING seems to functioning normal except for the battery.

I'm not a particularly cluey guy with computers so there may very well be a lot of obvious solutions/ reasons the more experienced of you with IT backgrounds/ repairs experience can provide. But I am a curious creature and do want to learn if there is a cost effective way to make repairs to this situation without just throwing money at it and still not knowing what happened.

To me, Average Joe no computer knowledge, the most obvious thing to try would be simply change the battery and see if that solves it but I also want to know exactly what the deal is with not being able to do an SMC reset.

Thanks a whole lot for your time. Cheers!

 

[Marcus Allemann]

Since then, I have ordered a new battery and tried it in my macbook pro but the situataion is the same and the computer doesn't recognise it.

I really want to try an SMC reset but the regular method on the keyboard doesn't seem to work (have followed instructions to the T and watched many youtube videos but it doesn't respond to it all. Any other ways to try an SMC reset?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

Even though it was looked at, tested, worked for a while, and you cleaned it, it sounds like some circuitry was indeed damaged. It probably needs at least a MagSafe board, if not a logic board and/or new battery as well.

In this case, if you performed an SMC reset by following these instructions for MacBook's with non-removable battery: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC) on your Mac, and the issue persists, then the MBP will need a hardware repair. When performing the SMC reset, you won't see any visual or audible confirmation that it completed. You simply press the four keys simultaneously, release, then power on. Attempting to reapply and SMC firmware will not do anything, and could render the MBP unable to boot at all.

C