# Macbook Pro No Display and Fan Spins Very Fast



## tim19889 (Jan 24, 2010)

Hi everyone, this is the first MAC I've ever worked on and it's for a friend. He said he was downloading something on it the other day when all of a sudden it just shut off on him. Now when you try to boot it up you get no display on the screen, it's completely black, and within about 15 seconds the fan starts to spin very fast and won't stop. There is no start-up chime when you start the machine either. It sounds like the DVD and hard drive are working. He has two 4GB ram sticks in his laptop, I tried taking one out and booting (no success), and then taking the other one out and sticking the first one back in and booting (no success either). Does anyone have any idea what could be the problem? I would hook it up to an external monitor to see if I could get any video but I need a usb-to-vga adapter which I do not have at the moment. I'm leaning towards this being a graphics card issue. What do you think?

The model of the laptop is a1286


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## tim19889 (Jan 24, 2010)

Seems to be a dead motherboard. I took the RAM out and started it up and it did not do anything different and it didn't sound any beeps like it should have. Took the battery out and tried just running on AC too and that didn't work. The laptop is under warranty though so my friend is going to take it to the Apple store to get it fixed.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

If it was under warranty, taking it in is the 1st thing to do. But those symptoms are typical of bad GPU, which is part of the mainboard.


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## tim19889 (Jan 24, 2010)

Yeah he wasn't sure if it was under warranty at first or not though. Anyway I know the warranty won't be void though because I didn't remove the sticker from the battery that voids it. I've read that the Nvidia GPUs in these things have been known to go bad quite often is this true? Also what do they do for a bad GPU then, do they try to repair it on the logicboard or would they just put in a whole new logic board and be done with it? I told him it's good he's under warranty because it would probably cost him big money to get it fixed by Apple if he wasn't lol. The mainboards themselves are going for $300-$400 on E-bay I saw. I've never replaced one before myself, do you think it is harder or easier or about the same difficulty as replacing a regular laptop's motherboard? I do know you need special tools like a three-pronged screwdriver and torx wrench. Also the philips-head screws are VERY small on his mac.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

They just replace the mainboard, it's cheaper then trying to fix it.


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