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OK I took a 2009 MBP to the Apple Store/Genius to get looked at as basically it was only getting to the white screen with apple logo. I was pretty sure the hard drive had died, so I left the MBP with the Apple Store for day. When I returned I was told I needed a new hard drive which I expected and also a new Display assembly part 661-5040 because my isight cable was broken or almost broken and it would stop the MBP from starting up correctly when a new drive was installed into the machine.

I basically asked surely a new cable can be installed, but was told a new display assembly had to be installed which i thought was strange and very pricey at £355. Along with a new hard drive, the Apple store wanted me to pay £598.80 in total to get my MBP fixed.

I basically just wanted to know, if anyone had heard of the an isight broken or wore cable causing a MBP not to startup?

I've since booted up my MBP with an external drive and the isight camera is working fine along with the display. I've ordered and new hard drive myself to install as £120 for a 500gb drive i thought was too pricey from Apple.

Anyone else been misdiagnosed by there Apple Store???

Any information would be helpful to me.

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  • Ask them if you can forego the full repair and if they would consider a partial repair. Since they are on the hook for the machine working after a repair, the goal is to fix everything all the time and it's up to the consumer to understand the quote and ask if it doesn't make sense. Since the question seems to have an answer (you went with a self-repair), this is more of a discussion point than a problem that can be answered. Feel free to ask us on Ask Different Meta if it's not clear how to make this more useful to the site and less about forming a discussion.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Jan 30, 2013 at 19:13

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Unsure about a 2009 MBP, but I had a 2010 MBP that booted fine even when the iSight cable was not connected to the motherboard (the motherboard was new and was being tested before all cables are connected).

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  • Ok interesting to know, cheers for reply.
    – Ginger Mac Benn
    Commented Jan 27, 2013 at 10:52
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I've seen many many instances where faulty display cables caused MacBook (and Air and Pro) to fail to boot. As I mentioned in the comments, any time you get a quote that doesn't make sense, ask a bit for more details.

Explain you can't see the error / don't have experience and ask if it is something you can see or something they tested or just something they know because they see hundreds of that machine each month and it's something they know from experience.

Without knowing how long they had the machine in, it could be something they got from an automated test using software or something they experienced by putting a good drive in and then checking that other work might need to be done.

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I have a MacBook Pro 13" from 2009 and I can confirm that the iSight cable can indeed prevent you from boot, white screen shows up and after NVRAM reset everything works again until next boot. So yes, in my case it's only that cable.

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