Remember – don’t get your MacBook wet!

Good morning,

Water and electronics don’t mix – I’ve talked about it before but I want to discuss a few points again. Is your MacBook waterproof? Not a chance.

It’s more common than you might think; but we receive items in for repair on a daily basis that show signs of liquid damage and without doubt if you get your iPhone wet, you’re bound to see problems unless it is addressed.

My guess is that some of these customers don’t even know that they had a liquid spill or had any contact with water/soda/coffee whatsoever. Sometimes is the unknowing fault of a child or household pet that inadvertently spills or “leaks” onto a keyboard.

For example, here’s a logic board that came out of a 2014 MacBook Pro with Retina Screen; and the device was not displaying video.

If you look closely, and I know that it’s hard to tell; but can you see that chip that is on the logic board that says “Apple 2010”? (It’s actually upside down) It’s about dead center in the picture…there is an IC that is on top of it with slightly green corrosion that is growing from some sort of liquid that got onto the board.

I know, the picture doesn’t do it much justice, and I even almost missed it. For scale, that component just below it is the headphone jack port, which is very small in itself…this was a minute amount of corrosion on the MacBook Pro Logic Board that was causing a major amount of problems!

So I cleaned it up and guess what? Video displayed back on the screen again. This would have been a $680 repair had this customer went directly to Apple…but it was just took me one hour of labor to complete it. The customer makes out and Mission Repair saves the day.

We offer a full-line of liquid damage repairs; but to be realistic, not all of these are repairable. If your MacBook was sitting at the bottom of the lake for week, it’s probably not repairable. But if you spill a cup of coffee on the keyboard of your computer; turn it off quickly and give us a call. We will do our best to save your day too!

Take care, Ryan

 

I walked into my Mission store and saw this:

Hello there friends,

I made a surprise visit to my Mission location yesterday..unannounced…and found my guys watching cartoons!  Yeah, you may know it.  It was “He-Man” from the 1980’s!

Just as I was getting close to letting my team hear an earful, I calmly asked “why is He-Man running on this customer’s MacBook?”  I’m a fair guy.  I don’t mind the employees listening to music while they work, or even tune the radio to AM to listen to a Royals games now and again.  But watching cartoons while you’re on the clock?  It ain’t happening.  I was looking for the ring leader.

Carl stepped up and said “It’s me.”  Mmmm boy, here we go!

“Ryan, this customer was having issues with Youtube shutting down randomly, and I’ve pinpointed it to the RAM in this unit.  I diagnosed it, tried it myself after I was able to duplicate the issue, and now it appears to be solved.  I’m now running the first long video that I could find, and He-Man was it.”  He goes on to say “It’s been running for a long time, but this is a 10-hour marathon and I wanted to make sure that our customer didn’t have the same issue after I repaired the computer.”

Well then.  I grabbed a large piece of humble pie and took a bite.  Those guys weren’t messing around.  They were testing a repair.  GREAT!

That means apparently I do condone cartoons while we’re on the clock.  As long as you tell me it’s for “testing” purposes, that’s all I need to hear!

Bonus points…what was He-Man’s tag line?  “I HAVE THE POWER!”  I can personally remember that opening sequence of the cartoon, apparently it’s a keeper in my mental files.

So rest knowing that if you bring your MacBook Pro in for repair: we may watch some cartoons on it.  But it’s for a good cause, and this customer was thrilled that we did.  It’s a highly technical operation, but someone has to do it 😉

Take care, Ryan

 

 

I’m a fan!

Hello there, I just talked a few minutes ago about liquid damaged units, but let’s move on to something that most people never think about:

DUST.

Yes, I’m sure you clean the outside of your computer from time to time…or at least the cleaning lady does it, right?  Well I bet you’re one of the millions of computer users that never opens their laptop to clean the inside.  Why would you want to?

Did you know that simply having dust inside of your computer can cause it to fail?  I spoke to a former PCB designer who stated “Dust causes arcing and can cause shorting and certainly fail an entire electrical circuit (LIKE A MOTHERBOARD!).  Additionally while it wouldn’t conduct full current flow per se, the suspended particles are able to carry electric charge and differences between the charges of the particles allows dust to have conductivity.”

So above is a picture of a fan inside of a Mac laptop…you can visually see the dust buildup on the blades.  Also, take a look at this logic board from the same unit:

The “dust bunnies” are accumulating and can simply cause issues in the long run.  Remember, dust CAN conduct electricity (similar to water, metal or human skin!) and that’s BAD for all of these exposed solder points. Why not open up your computer and blow it out once in a while?  If you’re not up to it, we’ll be happy to take care of it here at Mission Repair…and we can even do it while you wait – for a small service charge.

However, don’t wait until it’s too late…once the dust shorts out your logic board, you’ll be in for a much bigger repair bill; over something that should be considered preventive maintenance.  Now even Apple, Inc. doesn’t expect you to do this on your own…but they should.  Cleaning the outside of your computer is important, but cleaning the inside could double the life expectancy.  Take it from me, I’ve seen thousands of units just like the one above and dust can be the worst silent killer of your computer.

Have a good night, sleep tight, don’t let the dust bunnies bite!

Ryan

Black Friday is here with an online coupon!

Black Friday is here. We’re open, and we’re servicing the nation.

Looking for a fantastic deal today to get your cracked iPhone repaired? How about that smashed screen on your iPad? Mission Repair is offering 15% off every new repair order today 11/27/15 until midnight when you place your order online. Remember, we service every address in the United States and we’re proud of it.

Use coupon code “BFRIDAY15” to get your discount today only! Good luck out there.

Remember, if you call in to place your order, we have limited hours from 6:00am – 2:00pm today 844-459-0105.

Be safe out there, Ryan

(Offer cannot be combined with any other coupon including Got Repair, valid on new orders only. Expires 11/27/15 at midnight.)

Computer logic board repair at Mission Repair.

Hello there friends,

Every day we receive Macs and PC’s in for repair; and some times there are subtle issues that are bigger than one might think!

Recently I had a very nice customer that was simply trying to install a new solid state storage drive into his 17″ MacBook Pro; but the computer wasn’t wanting to install any new software.

He brought the unit into us, and at first I was sure that he just had a bad drive cable. So I tried a new cable but had the same issue. I tried another new hard drive with the same result. I tried the RAM, isolating everything that I could but drilled it down to a logic board (mother board) issue. Once I pulled the logic board from the unit, it was easy to see a burnt IC and resistor (center of the pic!):

The tricky part about this computer is that pretty much seems like it’s OK until you try to install software. Wow…there is just something wrong with the “logic” in this logic board!

So a little bit of surface mount rework and we will have this unit back and running perfectly for the customer.

I just want to let you know that a failing logic board can show it’s ugly head in a lot of ways. It can have no power, distorted video, not reading the memory or hard drives correctly and a myriad of other possible issues. Just keep these things in mind if you’re having computer problems, and that Mission Repair can solve them.

Have a good Wednesday! Ryan