Chosen Solution
I got this MacBook from a friend and it had a bulged battery and dint turn on, I did a SMC reset and after a couple of tries it started but was stuck in recovery mode, I upgraded the ram to 4gb and removed the battery, i tried installing a OS from usb and it won’t recognise that but It recognised a external USB keyboard and mouse, I formatted the hard drive in a windows system and after that I got a folder question mark, next Morning when I tried to turn it on it wouldn’t turn on, it’s was like the laptop was dead, charger shows greenlight, I tied doing SMC reset, pram reset, tried plugging in the battery, installed the original ram but no use now it just won’t turn on, the charger is fine, please help. I can manage repairs, I do have a multimeter, soldering iron so I can manage logic board repair, I have worked in windows laptops but not Mac.
Did you get/use a knockoff or genuine charger? A lot of the times you see these old machines with major issues, it’s because someone decided to use a knockoff charger at some point in the machine’s life and it damaged the motherboard. If that’s the case, the knockoffs have this bad habit of taking out the motherboard because they can’t die alone for some reason and want a dead friend. This isn’t my first time having to deal with this problem either nor hearing they used a knockoff charger. Anyway, if that’s not the case or you want to see, the DC-In board is an inexpensive fix you can try. Refer to this guide for the part and information on installing it. If this doesn’t fix the problem, there’s a good chance you will need to have the motherboard repaired at the component level, which has a bad habit of totaling out older machines like this. Update 6/24/19 Now that the DC-In board and charger have been ruled out, check the battery with CoconutBattery and add the screenshots you take to this question. Apple’s batteries last longer then the majority of PC’s, but they tend to break down and fail after 5 years of use and you are dealing with a 9-10 year old system. Update 6/27/19 If you have a 60W or 85W charger (85W works better since it will compensate for the lack of a battery), hold the power button for 10 seconds and then plug the power adapter in. The fans will run at full blast all the time but that will rule out if it’s because it doesn’t have a battery installed.
