Need help troubleshooting hardware on A1278, Macbook Pro

Hi there. My wife has a Macbook Pro mid-2009 version (A1278). This thing has had some issues for the past year. It originally had the problem where it would just suddenly go into standby and act all unresponsive and at times would require a hard shutdown. It was sent to Apple while it was covered under Applecare and was "fixed". Since then, we've had additional issues; sometimes the battery wouldn't charge, or the fans would come on full-bore. Doing the SMC / PRAM resets usually took care of it. Last night the computer wouldn't charge, regardless of SMC / PRAM resets. Even worse, when it would boot up, it was running super duper slow, and now it won't even boot - the wheel just spins.

I upgraded her RAM from 2GB to 8GB, but we had problems before and after. I imagine it can't be the hard drive since I don't see how that would affect the laptop's ability to charge. I've repaired plenty of Mac's and am comfortable doing a teardown if necessary (and have done so once before on this model).

Would you guys recommend a new logic board? Are there any other considerations I might be missing? Any help would be awesome. I don't want to just into replacing the most expensive part without some advice.

Thanks!

 

I strongly suspect logic board. HDD and ram dont affect charging at all. but can be a result of running slow.

to really test I would borrow or use a second charger ( you never know ) but my best guess is the charge circuit is gone on the motherboard. I have had it happen a few times myself but normally just refused to charge and could not see the battery

 

could it be the magsafe board, which plugs into the logic board? I'm only guessing since that is what the ac charger plugs into. Alot cheaper than a whole logic board.

 

Possible but doubtful. does not explain the system going slow plus it tends to be a low failure part. I have never had one fail, but have had many chargers AND motherboards fail. but fir the cost if it I certainly say it is worth a try

MacBook Pro 13" Unibody MagSafe DC-In Board (661-5235, 922-9307) - iFixit

or pull it out and check voltages with a multimeter if you can find spec

ok here it is

http://www.ifixit.com/Discuss/thread/6715

 

Thanks for the replies, guys. I will say that I was able to get it to charge slightly when I'd finagle the magsafe plug, so maybe it is a magsafe board issue? But it's so strange that the sudden inability to boot occurred simultaneously, unless maybe the logic board is freaking out over a bad connection or something. I'll try a second AC adapter, and maybe tear it down to the magsafe board and check the connection or something. Thanks for the food for thought y'all.

 

I'm totally not familiar with the mac, but isn't PRAM something similar to CMOS in the PC? If that is the case and resetting it used to fix thing, going from cheap to expensive kind of repair, I would try replace the CMOS battery or equivilent of.

 

have you ran it with no battery? I have seen bad batteries cause all types of performance issues you'd never think was being caused by the battery.