⟐ Commented August 28, 2026 at 5:42 MST

Hi, I have a 2012 Unibody MacBook Pro that I'm having a really weird issue with.

It wasn't used for around 6 months, but before that it was working perfectly fine. The battery was also working normally before I stopped using it.

Now, when I try to turn it on normally, it starts booting for about 1% and then suddenly turns off. But here's the weird part: if I hold down any key on the keyboard, it stays on and works like a normal laptop. As soon as I let go of the key, it immediately turns off.

The battery also isn't detected at all, and the battery indicator lights on the side don't work either.

I'm not really sure what's causing this. Could this be a battery or SMC issue, or could something on the logic board be causing it?

Is there anything I can test or try myself before taking it to a repair shop?

Also, diagnostics show reference code :PPT001, PFM001.

Thanks!

⟐ Commented August 27, 2026 at 21:01 MST

⟐ Commented August 27, 2026 at 18:27 MST

⟐ Answer edited August 27, 2026 at 15:57 MST

⟐ Commented August 27, 2026 at 13:43 MST

⟐ Answer edited August 27, 2026 at 9:12 MST

I'm trying to revive a Late 2017 21.5" iMac (A1418, EMC 2833) that has been black-screening.

Symptoms:

- When booting, I hear the startup chime, see the Apple logo for ~2-3 seconds, then the screen goes black

- Fans continue running normally

- I tried Internet Recovery (Option + Command + R, and regular Command + R)

- The recovery globe loads, I can select WiFi, enter a name, and even see the macOS Utilities window

- Sometimes the recovery utilities work briefly, but the screen blacks out after ~10 seconds

- I also see occasional vertical stripes / glitch lines on the screen for a split second right before it dies

- I tried resetting SMC and NVRAM multiple times — no change

- I also attempted to make a Ventura USB installer using a MacBook Air, but same black screen when booting from USB

Questions:

1. Given the symptoms + brief visual glitches before black screen, is this likely the GPU failing?

2. Is there a way to boot with reduced graphics (safe mode doesn't seem to help) or disable the AMD GPU in firmware?

3. Should I pursue logic board replacement or is this worth repairing economically?

Any guidance is appreciated — I'm comfortable opening the machine up if there's a safe test path.

Specs: iMac A1418 (21.5-inch, 2017), Intel i5, AMD Radeon Pro 555

Thanks!

⟐ Commented August 27, 2026 at 8:06 MST

And also, The hinge is getting tight overtime. i kept opening it gently because the screen might crack. I still have 3 more years to graduate with this laptop.

⟐ Commented August 27, 2026 at 5:51 MST

I assume the battery is dead and the charging circuit doesn't want to charge it due to it being critically low but im looking for alternative answers instead of opening it up for now

⟐ Answer edited August 26, 2026 at 20:15 MST

A friend have a problem with his 27" Thunderbolt display. Is it really annoying buzzing sound. My first guess would be the power supply??

The display in functioning OK, but that noise is killing the entire office.

How is the front glass attached? Glue? Can't see that in the break down guide.

Anyone else seen this?

Thanks

Here is a video of the issue.

YOUTUBE Video

⟐ Commented August 26, 2026 at 19:50 MST

I found some similar questions, but none specific enough to make sure they were the same problem, and none with detailed solutions.

A video of the symptoms before I explain with words:

My Macbook's screen sometimes starts fading out. First the pixels get wider, meaning the image seems pixelated. Then the colors start changing, until it gets inverted, then it fades to completely dark grey.

There's no correlation of when it does that and when it doesn't. Sometimes I am just working while everything is normal, and all of a sudden it starts. Sometimes it’s in the morning, I am just waking it from sleep, without even touching the screen, and it’s in that state.

If I then try to bend a little bit the upper left corner of the screen, it goes back to normal. Sometimes it’s enough to keep it working without my pressure. Sometimes as soon as I let go, it starts fading again, and I have to push the whole computer against something to exert that pressure while I work.

Sometimes the problem will remain for weeks and months, and at some point go away for weeks and months.

Sometimes I have to press very hard for the screen to come back to normal, sometimes a very gentle touch will suffice.

It’s mostly on the upper left corner that I have to bend. Sometimes it’s on the upper right corner, but rarely.

When I plug an external display, it works fine.

I tried opening up the Macbook and disconnecting the screen, vacuuming the cable, socket, and everything.

Sometimes after I put everything back together, the problem goes away for a few weeks. Sometimes it doesn’t change anything.

I also tried opening the case while the laptop is on, and moving a little bit the display cable, to see if it changes anything. It didn’t.

I noticed that some kind of shield on the motherboard’s socket is out of position. But it seems unlikely to me to cause the problem:

I also noticed a visual irregularity on the display cable’s outer wrapping, but I don’t know whether that’s damage or not:

I very recently noticed that the top part of my LCD is unglued from its shell. But I don’t know whether it was there before, and thus could be a cause, or whether it’s the consequence of my bending the top left corner of the screen so many times.

It seems to me the screen itself is fine.

So I feel like it could be either the socket on the motherboard, or the cable, or the socket on the LCD. Right?

Does anyone know whether there is a quick fix to this, or how to narrow down the cause?

My partner’s laptop is a 2010 macbook pro, so the same but one year younger. Do you know if I could plug her screen onto my laptop? If so I could rule out the motherboard socket, or conversely incriminate it.

Thanks a lot in advance for the help!

⟐ Commented August 26, 2026 at 19:05 MST

Any idea how to fix it? Or can I buy this part separately?

PS: In the photo "green" is the existing leg, "red" is what broke off.

⟐ Commented August 26, 2026 at 12:09 MST

It gets into the OS itself just fine, like I can see it working on the screen and it looks perfect, I just have no way to interact with the machine. Weird bit it that it's the same when I hop into recovery and internet recovery, keyboard and mouse are working the whole time it downloads internet recovery but when it actually starts to boot it they cut power. I tried resetting everything back to the factory config but the same issue happens.

I have tried cmd+option+P+R on boot to no avail (it does actually reset because in EFI the mac sees and uses the input devices just fine.) I have tried linux too but when it starts the USB boot, as you may guess, it cuts power to the USB ports and fails to boot. I don't have any thunderbolt 2 cables laying around but I am sure I can order some off ebay or something

I know all my bits work because the machine boots with ZERO errors so I don't understand why it would do this and then continue even after I put everything back how it was. Any ideas?

⟐ Commented August 26, 2026 at 5:07 MST

I recently had the misfortune of my apple studio display develop a small crack in the display. Luckly it seems that the pixels are fine and its just the glass. I was wondering, has anyone tried to fix such cracks with say resin? Or attempted to swap the glass screen? Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I dont want to pay the eye watering price that apple are requesting to fix the issue, and I was stupid enough to not put apple care on such a pricy item. Thanks!

⟐ Commented August 25, 2026 at 21:21 MST

Up until yesterday everything was fine, my Apple Magic Mouse 2 was working correctly on all surfaces.

Suddenly, the Magic mouse has stopped working on most regular surfaces and almost all fabrics (moving the mouse may move the cursor a little bit on these surfaces).

It does work on a transparent nylon, a very soft fabric (EDIT: 100% polyester) and on a leather couch and a specific part of my bare knee. (everything else like touch gestures works).

What is the reason for this? the optical sensor?

I already tried cleaning the optical sensor with a cloth, connecting it to another mac and removing the mouse preferences files with no luck.

Thanks :)

⟐ Commented August 25, 2026 at 18:29 MST

I have recently gotten my hands on a Mid 2015 15” MBP that was running slow, hoping I could get it fixed back up for personal use.

The previous owner had apparently swapped the old battery out with a new iFixit replacement one and then immediately sold the device as it has been running slow ever since. Using IntelPowerGadget on OSX or Task-Manager on Windows shows the CPU constantly being clocked down to 0.8ghz. This is definitely not thermal throttling as the chipset never exceeds 50C, there are also no faulty sensors when checking with HWMonitor.

The original battery had been discarded so I cannot check whether this issue is actually caused by the battery at all, however inspecting the battery visually and using CoconutBattery I can see that it is not an OEM battery since there is no battery serial number being displayed. Running the hardware diagnosis (holding the “D” key at startup) reveals that the battery might have problems but it says I should still be able to use the device without any noticable changes, showing the error code PPT004.

I then went ahead and bought this used original A1398 battery, thinking it was salvaged from another Macbook, however it ended up being some sort of refurbished third party battery causing the same issues again so I will have to return it anyway. The values shown on CoconutBattery are similar for both batteries (both less than 10 charge cycles, etc.) so I have just attached an image of the iFixit one below.

The machine itself is in mint condition, I have made sure to look for any water damage on the logic board but it seems perfectly clean, after all the device can be used flawlessly with the exception of it running at 1/4 the supposed speed.

I did come across similar threads however they were usually regarding older macbooks or were only having this issue intermittently when plugging in an external monitor, etc.

Others proposed just deleting the IOPlatformFamily.kext from OSX to get rid of the Intel Speedstepping feature, however this method is somewhat outdated and seems like a stupid idea anyway. A similar solution was being shared here, however that is again just circumventing the issue instead of fixing it, and even then Im not sure that would at all.

Essentially I just want to know two things:

1. Is this throttling behaviour really linked to a 3rd party battery instead of a logic board fault, and if so, why would anyone buy or manufacture such batteries if they make the device useless? If this is the case there should have been plenty of others with this exact issue, yet I have only found a few threads discussing a similar issue
2. With the iFixit as well as the other “genuine” battery not working as intended, where would I even begin looking for an actual OEM battery within Europe without having to get it replaced at an Apple store?

I never had any issues replacing the battery on a 2012 MBP, so Its fair to say this behaviour could just be another one of Apples shenanigans to get peoples devices fixed at Apple only and nowhere else, but I just couldnt find a definitive answer especially since I dont have the original battery to compare against.

I wouldn’t know where to ask otherwise, so any reply would be very appreciated!

Update:

I have tried using ThrottleStop on BootCamp Windows according to this thread, this does however also not work. Deleting the IOPlatformPluginFamily.kext as mentioned in the same thread is not an option since it does not even exist on my OS X Catalina installation.

Final Update (Found a solution):

So it turned out not to be a battery related issue . The person I bought the device from stated the issue appeared after swapping it for an iFixit replacement battery, but after buying yet another OEM battery the problem still persisted.

Instead, the issue was related to the CPU current sensing circuitry. I didnt manage to find accurate boardview and schematics for my specific model (820-00138) so I had to use this XinZhiZao (similar to ZXW tool) maintenance program which had the correct board layout to find the problem.

The issue was caused by the "SMC_CPU_IMON_ISENSE" line which is produced by the U7200 power management IC. This chip is responsible for measuring the CPU power usage among other things, and sends the signal through R5530 directly to the SMC. This line was permanently stuck at 1.8V which made the SMC read a high CPU power draw, so it throttled the CPU to 0.8ghz clock for safety reasons.

I ended up running a jumper (blue) from this line to ground, thus forcing the line to 0V.

This way the system now reads CPU current as 0W and I can finally use the machine with its intended performance. No lags, everything finally runs smoothly. It also no longer gets stuck in sleep mode after closing the lid.

Obviously this fix is only a workaround as I still dont know what was pulling the line to 1.8V, so I assume it was either the SMC or U7200 which shorted the line to a neighboring power line somewhere. I didnt want to risk ruining the SMC by reballing it so shorting the pad for C5530 to ground seemed easier to do. However this means there is a constant 1.8V short to ground so I might want to replace the jumper wire with a resistor to avoid losing much battery power being wasted into the short in the future.

In conclusion, the built-in Apple Diagnostics (Holding down Cmd + D on startup) did find an issue, however it was not related to the battery but rather the SMC or U7200. My assumption of having to use a OEM battery was wrong, as it also now works just fine with the replacement iFixit battery. I used HWmonitor on OSX to check the “CPU Package Total” readings, which were at 100 watts and above. After the fix it is reading -W, so the remaining battery time estimations might be inaccurate, but it technicallly isnt necessary.

Im not exactly sure how a simple battery swap could have caused this issue, but since I didnt find much information regarding Macbooks being throttled to 800mhz CPU performance, make sure to check all temperature and current readings using some sort of monitoring tool like mentioned above. A faulty temperature sensor might possibly cause a similar issue.

Hope this helps

⟐ Answered August 25, 2026 at 17:05 MST

Hi everyone,

I have a Late 2023 MacBook Pro 14" (M3 Pro), and I've noticed that the display lid is slightly misaligned to the right. When the laptop is closed and I run my fingers along the side edges, I can clearly feel that the top lid is slightly off-center compared to the bottom case.

I've seen other people reporting this exact same issue online, so I'm attaching a few more photos of misaligned screens for reference.

I would like to know: Is it possible to open the bottom case and adjust the hinge screws to realign the display perfectly?

Thanks in advance for the help!

⟐ Answer edited August 25, 2026 at 13:16 MST

Hello!

I have a big problem with my iMac.

I can´t start the iMac - there is no gong, fan or something else. Always black screen.

These things i have already done:

- SMC reset

- cleaning the fan

- change the power supply

- change the battery on the logic board

Now i dont have any ideas, what i can do.

I don´t hav a garranty for the iMac - it is from 2013.

If anybody have a idea, please let me know!

kindest regards

Klaus

⟐ Answered August 25, 2026 at 11:13 MST

⟐ Answered August 24, 2026 at 8:06 MST