First of all, let me apologize for not having any pictures to go along with this article. I was in a hurry to get the MacBook to start up and had to just do it. This deals with a white MacBook in the 2007 vintage.
There have now been two occassions in which the MacBook would not turn on after shutting it down or if it did turn on it was only for a few seconds and then turning it off and back on again resulted in nothing.
It turns out that the fix for this is relatively simple. The first time it happened it took a lot of hunting and searching to find out what was going on. There were suggestions about the power control board and the motherboard and all sorts of other things. This is what I found (I will do my best to use word pictures).
I removed the battery. Inside the battery compartment is a silver strip of metal along the side of the compartment. This strip is "L" shaped and runs along two sides of the compartment. There are three tiny "phillips" screws along the long side of the metal strip. Remove those three screws. The strip then comes out, long side first.
Once you remove the strip, you will see two memory card release handles. Pull those sideways and the memory card comes out far enough to be removed. I pulled both cards out, paying attention to which way they belong on the slots.
Along the metal contacts was a white substance that looked like heat sink compound. It completely coated both of the cards along the connector edge. I have no idea what the substance is or if it is even supposed to be there. Thinking this was the problem with the MacBook, I used rubbing alcohol and cleaned the gunk off. I further cleaned the contacts with a standard pencil eraser. I did this for both memory cards and then inserted them back into the slots. It takes quite a bit of force to get them seated properly. Once I did this and put everything back together, the MacBook started up and has been running worry free for the last year or so… until two days ago. The MacBook was turned off and would not come back on. At all.
Once again, I pulled the memory cards. Both of them had a very fine layer of the white substance on them. It was almost invisible. I took an ordinary pencil eraser and cleaned the contacts. I turned on the MacBook and it's working again.
I have no idea what the substance is. I've heard rumors that it might be an anti-shorting compound or something. However, it definately interferes with the correct operation of the MacBook.
Remember, do these steps AT YOUR OWN RISK. I make no guarantee that this will solve your issues.
