Failed Logic Board Reflow?

So my 2009 15" MacBook Pro seemed to have logic board failure a few weeks ago. Symptoms included the screen not turning on, no start-up chime, sleep indicator light flashing when turned on. I took out the board, wrapped it up in a couple layers of foil with cuts outs on the GPU and other two chips, and heated it up with my heat gun for about 5 minutes. Popped the board back in fired it up but nothing changed. I then pulled the board back out and more aggressively heated the board for about 20 minutes. After putting the board back in and starting it up I now get absolutely no response. No sleep light, no HD or fan noise. However, now the led light on the magsafe charger just blinks which I've never seen it do before. I've been searching the net and so far haven't found any info on what this could mean although I fear that I've further damaged the board beyond my ability to recover. I would really appreciate anyones input or advice on what this could mean or what I could try on my own. The nearest Apple store is ~2 hrs away unfortunately....

Forgot to mention, All of this is without the battery inserted, it displayed 1st problem without battery, it displays current problem without battery so it seems like it wouldn't be a battery issue.

Also I used a charger from my sisters macbook and it showed the same blinking light as mine, yet when i plug my charger into her computer it works just fine...

I'm going to cast a vote for you've probably done further damage to the board. I'm not sure I completely buy into the 'reflow' thing to begin with - for me the risk outweighs the potential of reward. If you know the board has to be replaced - then I guess there's no harm in trying - but it wouldn't be my first impulse.

BrianLachoreVPI said:

I'm going to cast a vote for you've probably done further damage to the board. I'm not sure I completely buy into the 'reflow' thing to begin with - for me the risk outweighs the potential of reward. If you know the board has to be replaced - then I guess there's no harm in trying - but it wouldn't be my first impulse.

Click to expand...

Well I don't necessarily disagree, but my laptop is pretty old at this point and i'm not really willing to invest much more $ into it. I really would love to try and get it back to some kind of working order and try and sell it for at least a little something to put towards a new one....

macfable said:

I really would love to try and get it back to some kind of working order and try and sell it for at least a little something to put towards a new one....

Click to expand...

...for some reason...baking it in the oven isn't the first thing that would spring to my mind. At any rate - I feel somewhat safe in saying that your board is 'toast' - no pun intended.

Uhh, that's not how you reflow boards and if you concentrated the heat on specific parts you've messed them up along with the solder around/underneath them. I agree with BrianLachoreVPI that you've toasted the board beyond repair..

If the sleep indicator light was flashing when you first booted up, that usually means your RAM is not seated correctly or gone bad.

Like others have said, you probably did more damage to the logic board on the 2nd go of the reflow process.

When an smd is reflowed the heating temperature and positioning is tightly controlled, and ESD precautions are taken. As others have suggested, you've probably zapped the logic board. The original fault was likely to be the failure of an SO-DIMM or memory slot. The only sometimes effective professional reflowing I've come across is re the Nvidia GPU, and better still it should be replaced. That wasn't your problem.