I've had my beloved Macbook Pro for about 15 months now (3 months after the warranty expired). Three weeks ago, I was causally listening to iTunes and surfing the internet when I realized that my keyboard and trackpad would sporadically stop working. I thought "no problem, I'll just restart". After numerous restarts, I was till having the same problem. From this point, I thought maybe there was some program I've installed that was causing a problem. Here's a list of things I've tried
- I unstalled most of my 3rd party programs
- Made sure I installed all the critical updates from Apple
- Archive and Install
After all that, I was still having issues!!! So yesterday, I took my laptop to the Apple store. To their credit, the guys at the genius bar are definitely knowledgeable and more than qualified to diagnose my laptop troubles. After looking at logs and running a few diagnostics, it was determine that my software was fine, but it looked like to be more of a hardware issue. Two things: either my HDD is failing or there's a problem with the keyboard and trackpad. The HDD I can replace myself, but I was floored when they quoted me almost $400 to replace the keyboard and the top half of my case that contains the trackpad. I might as well buy one of the newer Macbooks. I graciously declined to have them service my laptop as I would try my luck researching other alternatives on the internet. I should've bought the Apple Care when I had a chance!
After doing a little research online, I found out that I wasn't the only person having this problem. It appears to be a hardware defect. Apparently, there's a ribbon located under the battery the eventually warps due to the heat that's being expelled from the battery. To bad Apple doesn't see it that way!
Here's temporary fix I found on the internet:
Before you try this, it is temporary and I’d like my MacBook Pro to be fully functional without the use of Sellotape (Scotch tape, whatever) at some point, as I’m sure you would. I take no responsibility for burnt laps, smoking MacBooks or the smell of burning glue or any other associated issues the fix might cause.
- Get a small piece of sticky tape and roll it up
- With the power on, battery out and machine on:
- Place the Sticky tape onto the ribbon cable whilst pressing the caps lock key to identify that the keyboard is working
- Close the screen and turn over your mack book.
- Replace the battery so that it presses on the sticky tape and ribbon cable
So far this seems to have fixed my issue. We'll see how long it last!!!
June 7, 2009 at 10:10 PM