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need help! AppleCare Warranty

post #1 of 5
3/27/12 at 4:44pm
Thread Starter 
To all the Apple Geniuses on this forum, please help a girl out?

How does Apple or any Apple Authorized Service Provider know if you have opened up your macbook pro yourself? I know once you open it up you void your warranty... but how would they know that you did?

The problem is, my macbook pro (2011) was fixed a during the summer by an authorized repair provider, the whole logic board was replaced for free because my mac was still under warranty. I recently swapped out the optical drive because it was useless, and added an internal hd in there. A month later (couple days ago), I inserted my headphones into my audio jack, and when i pulled it out, there was a red light. Now, the audio preferences for mac keeps staying under digital out (optical digital-out port) when i don't have my headphones in there, and when i do, no sound comes out of the headphones. The weird thing is, there is absolutely no problem when i am boot camped into windows, headphone works fine, the laptop produces sound just fine as well.

I feel like its both a software (mac part) problem and a hardware problem (red light). What can i do?
Also, i replaced my hd back to the optical drive just in case i would need to take it to a service provider. but my question is, how would they know if the mac has been opened up before? Can they void my warranty on the spot?
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post #2 of 5
3/27/12 at 4:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by totallyhopeless View Post

How does Apple or any Apple Authorized Service Provider know if you have opened up your macbook pro yourself?

The blue stuff on the screws, I think.

Quote:
I know once you open it up you void your warranty…

That's wrong and has never been the case. Since RAM and HDDs are user-replaceable, you're just fine opening one up.

Quote:
recently swapped out the optical drive because it was useless, and added an internal hd in there.

That's fine. It's not standard behavior, but if you put it back in before you take it in, it'll be fine.

Quote:
…red light…

Common problem with an easy fix. I don't remember it offhand, but it's easy to find. Hang on, I'll take a look.

Seriously, you don't need to take it in to Apple and you don't need to worry about your ODD removal. If you ever DO need to take it in for service, just put your optical drive back in first.

EDIT: okay… the community doesn't seem to have a clue what it's on about. You see "stick a toothpick in there" virtually everywhere you look for a solution to this.

That's stupid and dangerous, not to mention unnecessary. I had this happen to my MacBook Pro a few years back, and it continued to work just fine for all forms of audio output in both Windows and OS X. Unfortunately I don't remember what (if anything) I did to fix it. It actually doesn't light up anymore, but it worked fine when it did. My Mac Pro's doing it right now (and has been for months), but that's probably a different issue, given the number of inputs and outputs on this thing.

You can try using a 1/8" audio jack to tick the optical back to analog, I guess. That's probably the safest fix. Safer than a toothpick, at any rate.
PhilBoogie
That's Google alright. For a stupid company they sure do dumb things.
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PhilBoogie
That's Google alright. For a stupid company they sure do dumb things.
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post #3 of 5
3/27/12 at 4:55pm
Thread Starter 
first of all, thx for helping out, but its still broken...
i have actually looked online for the red light fix, websites said to stick a toothpick or something in there to turn the switch off, i tried with so many things, wasn't able to find the switch for hours!

is there anyway i can reset the mac audio preferences? i tried deleting the com.apple.audio pref (i think that was what its called) from the user library and restarting, but that didn't work either. I also called apple, and they got me to install a brand new version of lion on the hd, did that, but the audio was still muted on the new lion. tried resetting PRAM but didn't work either. is there anything else i can do?
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post #4 of 5
3/29/12 at 10:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by totallyhopeless View Post

is there anyway i can reset the mac audio preferences? i tried deleting the com.apple.audio pref (i think that was what its called) from the user library and restarting, but that didn't work either. I also called apple, and they got me to install a brand new version of lion on the hd, did that, but the audio was still muted on the new lion. tried resetting PRAM but didn't work either. is there anything else i can do?

The switch is meant for digital optical audio connectors - mini toslink cable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEdtxaquGXI

If you get one of them, you might be able to unset the switch when you remove the plug. You can get a cheap one on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Recoton-Fiber-...3041318&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.com/Optical-Toslin...3041318&sr=8-3
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post #5 of 5
4/2/12 at 11:13pm
Thread Starter 
so, just to let people know... i ended up taking my mac to an apple authorized repair store; their rules are not as strict as apple's. I removed the hard drive and replaced my optical, sent it in and got a new logic board. but if I didn't get the repair for free, i would've bought what marvin suggested. apple insider is the best help i've actually gotten compared to all the other sites I've seemed help at. Thanks a lot guys!
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