Chosen Solution
Looking for some help on a late 2008 MBP 2.53ghz. Has been working like a champ since new, but has recently developed an issue turning on when left powered down overnight. SMC and PRAM reset has no effect. Battery is in good condition with charge indicator showing fully charged. MagSafe indicator also works as it should. The correct charger is also being used. The problem only appears on the very first boot after a night powered down where it will show no signs of life other than a green light on the MagSafe and a full charge indicated. Shorting the power switch pads on the motherboard has no effect, eliminating a failed power switch. Getting the laptop to power up seems to be a crapshoot of removing the battery and mains power, letting it sit for a while, then reinstalling battery and power where it will then boot. When this doesn’t work, removing the battery and mains and holding the power button down while plugging in the mains only, seems to bring it to life - with fans going full pelt. Subsequent reboots after this initial process goes without problem, as do reboots after leaving the laptop off for a few hours, it only happens on initial boot after being left powered off overnight. Interestingly -and it may just be coincidental- this seems to have manifested itself after the last Apple Firmware update. Time for replacement logic board? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Update (04/26/2016) Quick update. I have now tested the mainboard with any unnecesary components unplugged: Trackpad, IR/Sleep Sensor, Battery Level Indicator, Airport Card, Optical Drive, Camera, Mic, Express card and Battery. The power on issue still remains. Next step is to remove the main board, give it a good clean and a proper once over. Ever forward….. Oh, FWIW Apple Hardware Test shows no problems. Go figure.
OK we have the needed clue here! Your HD’s spindle motor is failing so when it’s cold it won’t spin up in the required time window the system is expecting. But once started the first time the second time has a chance of booting up. When we put the system to sleep mode the time window is longer as the OS is already loaded in RAM. So it’s time for a new drive. Depending on how much stuff you have on your drive you could go with either a SSHD hybrid drive which offers a deep SSD cache to speed up starting up and running your OS and offers the deep storage of a traditional HD. Or, you could put in a SSD but the larger the size the more expensive they are, they do hold up better though from the bangs a laptop gets Update (04/24/2016) Well you have me scratching my head here a bit ;-} Being left over night in Sleep Mode and having it work just fine implied the HD (even if it was in the optical drive bay). Are you sure you have the SSD set as the boot up drive? But, your new note stating you’ve pulled both drives out and it still fails has me here. That would imply the issue is within the power control logic related to the power switch. No, I don’t think you have a SMC or EFI issue or power system issue here as the power buses are still functional as seen with the test in Sleep Mode over night. This is more to do with how the power switch logic works. It could be as simple as a cold solder joint to a bad cap. Did you get your system wet as some time? Water damage could explain this. Not sure you need a new logic board just yet. I would take it out and give it a good clean if the system got wet at some point. I use distilled water and then I go over it again with high grade isopropyl alcohol (85% or higher) to act as a drier. Using a soft brush to carefully scrub down the areas that look like they got wet with something. Use a can of can’ed air as well here to blow the wetness of the water and alcohol out. Given the age of the system I would also clean off the old thermal paste and refresh it. I personally like the Arctic products: Arctic Silver ArctiCleanArctic Silver Thermal Paste You may still need to get someone with micro soldering skills to go over the board and check the power switch circuitry even after the clean.
OK. Try this…Turn it off overnight and disconnect the battery then the next morning re-connect the battery and see if you have issues starting it. Instead of having it charge overnight. If it has issues starting then the next night charge the battery fully overnight, then try to start it up. and last but not least remove the battery all together overnight and the next morning start up the computer with-out the battery. The first is start-up with a cold battery. The second is start-up with a warm battery. The last is start-up without the battery. Which worked better. If it only starts up with out the battery good then I would say your battery is the issue.
