Won't start up; charger blinking orange

dbartul, You are a life saver!! I had this problem with my mid 2012 Macbook Pro 13"... Just suddenly powered off and I couldn't get it to turn on. When I plugged in the Magsafe Charger it just flickered really dimly. Was thinking about taking it straight to the shop, but I googled the symtoms and came across this forum, I was skeptical about it working for me, but gave it a try and boom!! Laptop powered on, charger working, everything fine!! Thanks a bunch!

Thank you so much dbartul!! Really a life saver. God bless u!

Can you add a video off how to remove it? I'm afraid of causing any damage to my MacBook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJvOoSKlPfM

Just unplug the cable and plug it straight back in, only that part of the video.

After waiting almost 2 hours, a not so genius at the genius bar looked at me like a fool when I braught up this thread. He said it was a "component" issue and my labtop had to be sent off for repair($300 is a lot for a broke college student). I walked out and after 2 hours of hunting for a screwdriver compatible for opening the case, I hit the jackpot at home depot ($10 for a screwdriver that has all the tips needed for anything screwdriver related). THANKS DEBARTFUL! Im sure you would be a valuable asset to the genius bar..... I took my labtop to the genius bar because I was too scared doing this on my own. I found hunting around for a screwdriver was more of a challenge, so if you can find a scredriver you can fix this issue on your own. 🙂

Hi everyone,

my macbook pro later 2009, died the other day, I called Apple the other day, its obviously out of warranty and they wanted me to take it into the genius bar. Since then i have tried dbartul's remedy and still nothing, i've tried over and over again. i still get the light orange light flashing, I work for Samsung and had a staff member in a retail store tell me to just leave the charger in and it will come good after 24 hours. well that didnt work either.

Can someone please help?

I stopped trying to use the charger for a week, then tried it again and it works perfectly fine now

Thanks so much for sharing this video Fiachrag! I'm a visual person and was too afraid to mess with the inner components without an example. And guess what? My laptop NOW turns out and takes a charge! Phew! Thanks everyone. And a huge thanks to dbartul for getting us all on the right track in the first place!

Debartful you are an absolute star, just about to spend €300 to have is fixed. It works just careful where you screws go.

7 of them are very small and easy to lose with a magnetic screwdriver

AMAZING! Thank you so much! Debartful, that worked a treat. I would never ever ever dare to do such a thing, especially because I am the least tech savvy. I was even stresses when someone mentioned the plug next to the ram or whatever hahah. So yea really appreciate it!

And thanks to Fiachrag for the video, that really helped too, coz yea again, not techno savvy so it made it super easy.

My mac just switched off, nothing worked, as everyone says, red/pink light was on for the charger. But everything is 100% again... well I hope.

Better than that $300 repair fee. I only paid $2.80 for the screw drivers at daiso!

Thank you so much, I couldn't turn on my Macbook for two days, just tried what you suggested.. was not sure that it will work for me !! I am very happy now that it worked, you are a life saver. Thanks a million.

Thank you so much dude, it worked!!! But my only question is, maybe you might know, why does replugging the connector worked? Was it really because it got loose?

The same thing happened to me, macbook pro 13 mid 2012 completely dead, no battery level lights and a flashing magsafe adapter. Couldn't get online to read this forum so ended up at the Apple store.

The genius told me the same fix as here, disconnect the battery and reconnect it. This resets something.

He then went on to say it was a known firmware fault and that an update was available. He ran the update EFI Firmware 2.9, but despite it installing and rebooting, the same update is continuously there when I check for updates. I have installed it about 10 times now and it is still there. Downloaded it directly from the support site, still no joy. Anyone know how to install this so it shows up as installed?

This morning the same problem happened again. Okay, I now know how to get the machine running again but this does not appear to have fixed it for good.

Both times this has happened I have just plugged in my iPad Mini, which I am told draws a lot of power. I am wondering if it is connected (no pun intended) in same way to the fault.

The problem is not the magsafe, tried a different one and then the Apple store exchanged it for a new one. It might however be the battery itself.

Can anyone shed some more light on this subject and perhaps provide a permanent fix?

Has anyone else had this happen more than once?

Thank you, dbartul! This worked on my late 2012 13" MacBook Pro, saved me $310 and a lot of trouble. Much appreciated!

macasas-c said: "Both times this has happened I have just plugged in my iPad Mini, which I am told draws a lot of power. I am wondering if it is connected (no pun intended) in same way to the fault."

This happened to me while I was testing the various Lightning USB cables with my iPhone 5s to see which would work (Apple, in iOS7, has a test upon plugging in that rejects most un-certified cables). My MacBookPro8,3 (early 2011) died while I was testing. dbartul's (THANKS!) tip brought it back but I didn't associate the cable testing with having caused it until a saw your post.

Not remembering which cable I was testing when it went dead, I started testing them again. When I got to the bad cable, my Mac instantly went dead! So I did the battery disconnect. This time it didn't seem to work. Oh cr#p!. Tried again. No go. I disconnected the battery a 3rd time and, thinking maybe I'd forgotten a step I got on my other computer to review but didn't find anything. Went back, re-connected the battery and immediately connected the charger. Success!! I'm not sure if it was the extra time the battery was disconnected or the fact that the charger was connected immediately (or maybe some other factor), but the bottom line is don't give up if it doesn't work the first time.

Also, as I found out the first time, the clock gets reset to some time in 2000. Depending on what programs are going to restart (Safari being a prime example) on startup, many will not be happy with this! So the second time I logged into the Guest account and reset the clock before logging into my regular account.

Finally, plugging in a iPad Mini shouldn't cause a problem; my iPad charges just fine. Maybe it's your cable? Is it an Apple cable? Searching discussions.apple shows others have had problems with charging cables "killing" their MBPs. Or maybe there's a problem with your Mini.