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I have a 2012 13" MacBook Pro (non retina). The power button is not working. Other then that the system was working fine. I tried to fix the power button by opening the back cover, disconnecting the battery, followed by removing and reattaching the keyboard wire. After I connected the battery and booted the system by connecting the MagSafe connector, the system booted really slow (I have an SSD, and it usually takes ~10 seconds but it took 3 mins) and the fans were at full speed.

The system became really slow and apps launched really slowly. I check the Activity Monitor and CPU was idle. So I figured out that I need to reset the SMC. But I don't know how to do it, as the power button is not working. I tried resetting with smcflasher.efi (from the smcupdate.pkg) by booting to rEFIt. It says the reset option is unavailable and figured it out that Apple locked down resetting/modifying firmware externally.

Is there any other method to reset SMC?

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  • Are other keys working? You could try shorting power-on pads if it is just power button - there is picture of their location on a 2012 13" MBP here
    – lx07
    Commented Jun 30, 2019 at 21:28

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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If you open the system and disconnect all power, eventually the SMC has to restart, but that's not necessarily the same as a signaled clear.

We would need to have the schematics of the SMC and the firmware to know for sure, but if you don't feel you want to repair the keyboard and can't otherwise use the Mac without an SMC reset, I would disconnect the battery for maybe 24 to 48 hours. You've already done the brief disconnect of power so this likely is a situation where you need to have the boards replaced or repaired.

Assuming there's no damage due to repairs, $300 for a mail in repair was an option until the 2013/2012 models went vintage.

If it's purchased in Turkey or California, you still have time for the Apple repair at the approximate cost above.

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