Macbook Pro - Strange Story wifi card

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Hello everyone,

I have a late 2008 macbook pro that has served me well. Over the years I have made a few upgrades to the machine to improve it's performance. About one year ago my wifi stopped working and my computer didn't recognize any wifi or bluetooth.

I put off this issue for awhile and settled on just using a usb wifi adapter. I decided recently to finally get the wifi card replaced and took my laptop into the apple genius bar.

They hooked up my laptop for analysis and also did basic things such as reset the pram which didn't do anything. The report came back showing my wifi card was dead and needed replacing. The cost 116.00 Dollars.

Of course this wasn't much to me so I left my laptop at the store and was told I should get it back the next day. Well I received a call later that day from a tech at the apple store stating upon opening up my computer they could tell I had installed third party things such as ram etc.. and wouldn't work on my machine because it was against their policy.

So I went back into the store to pick up my computer and was again told why they couldn't touch it regardless if I was paying for the repair.

I arrived home shortly after and turned on my macbook pro just and strangely for the first time in a year my computer was recognizing the wifi card and I was able to connect.

I am so dumbfounded on how it's working. Their analysis stated the card was dead and they informed me they didn't do any work on it so how can this be?

I am more than thrilled it's working but am just so puzzled. I wanted to share the story to see if any of you had any ideas on how it can now be working??
 

chscag

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Their analysis stated the card was dead and they informed me they didn't do any work on it so how can this be?

I am more than thrilled it's working but am just so puzzled. I wanted to share the story to see if any of you had any ideas on how it can now be working??

A nice end to the story... :) Here's my best guess: They took your machine apart and then changed their mind about repairing it. They reassembled it and that somehow corrected either the WiFi card to work again or the WiFi antenna. (either one could have been the problem)

And by the way, because you had third party ram in the machine was no excuse for them not doing the repair. When I took my iMac in to Apple to have the hard drive replaced which died, they replaced it under my warranty. The technician even remarked to me when they were doing the diagnosis that I had third party memory installed. ;)
 
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A nice end to the story indeed :) Thanks so much for posting, your theory may very well be right.

Regarding them declining to work on my computer it had to do with not only the ram but the fact I had installed a new trackpad myself and forgot to put back two screws that hold in the back case. They classified this as damage and tampering by a third party therefor they couldn't work on it.

Regardless all worked out as they somehow fixed the issue and I didn't have to pay a dime :)
 

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