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How to fix a broken MacBook Pro by baking it in the oven

A few minutes at 170 degrees, and the machine is good as new. Please, whatever you do, do not try this at home.

How to fix a broken MacBook Pro by baking it in the oven

This is not the advice you would get from a helpful person at Apple’s Genius Bar - but a programmed from iFixit.com has reveaaled how to fix a MacBook using a gas oven.

A few minutes at 170 degrees Centigrade and the machine was running right as rain.

Sterling from iFixit’s advice is not for the faint-hearted - or for anyone remotely afraid of dismantling expensive laptops component by component - but it worked on his overheating MacBook Pro.



Sterling resorted to extreme measures when his machine was no longer hot - it stopped working entirely.

The problem, Sterling diagnosed, was that the overheating machine had melted the metal solder - hence a spell in the oven would re-melt and re-flow the solder back into place.

Sterling says, ‘When I powered it off and on again, the power light lit, but I got no boot chime and the screen alternated between glitchy and black—it all screamed that something on the logic board was busted.

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‘Probably the water-boiling temperatures had caused the board to flex, knocking solder loose from its ball grid arrays. The likely fix? Reflow it: Heat it up until the balls of solder melt back into their assigned spots.’

Sterling he unhooked all the connectors from the computer’s logic board, and baked said logic board for seven minutes.

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He then applied thermal paste, reattached the connectors, and the machine worked again.

When it failed a second time, he drilled holes near the fan to help it cool faster.

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On balance, though, you may find it easier to go to a nearby Apple Store and ask someone behind the Genius Bar.