2007 macbook pro no longer powers on

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Feb 17, 2010
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Ok, first of all, I did a google search which yeilded nothing (that I could find) for my situation.

The story thus far.
2006/2007 macbook pro 15 inch (intel)
os 10.4.11
It's not under warrenty anymore.
I opened her up once to replace a dead hard drive, no problems, and she worked nicely for a few months. Then one day either the battery died or some disturbance in the force caused the computer to crash.

I took out the battery, tried mains yadda yadda. Tried everything under the sun that google and youtube could provide. So I resorted to opening it up and from images online, discovered the power cable ribbon. I had a feeling it could have gone loose anyway. Gave it a gentle push, pushed power, then lo and behold it worked.

this worked for a few months, then I must have left the power on and drained the battery, so I tried the power cable, and it wouldn't turn on. so opened her up, pushed the power ribon, pushed power and it worked.

Turned it off after a while. Tried to turn it on.... same story. Got it to work, turned it off, wouldn't turn on again. Opened it, power ribbon push, power, work.

It got to a point where I had to do this every time I wanted to turn the power off and on, or if it somehow drained battery. So I always left it on the power cable, always leaving it on and only leaving on sleep to let it rest.

Then summer came, making things worse and then after the new year this year, I did the old ritual... but when I pushed power, nothing happened. I pushed the ribbon a little firmer... nothing happened.
So I walked away upset with the idea that I might have to buy a new laptop.
About half an hour I decided to try again, and it worked...

So I backed up MOST of my important stuff figuring the next time might be the killer... and tonight after trying to load a 1gb psd (trying to finish a poster artwork) it froze... which for a normal computer isn't the end of the world... but for this laptop, an absolute crash, means the possibility of never turning on again. I took my chances and pulled the power and batter (the power button doesn't work PERIOD) then tried my ritual again... Nothing.
Tried half an hour later... nothing.

I'm going to try again in the morning... and if it still doesn't work... then I have an issue which no site has been able to help me with.

It MUST only be a power button connection issue of some sort because the laptop it'self worked. I doubt a crash would have fried anything (I hope it didn't)

So I need a bit of help from someone tech minded. What do I need to do to look even deeper into it? Is there an alternative way of powering it up without using the power button? Is there another connector other than the keyboard/power ribbon connecter that might be loose (I think the connectors on the ribbon it'self might not be contacting the mainboard properly...)

I can't really afford a new macbook, so all I'm left to do is take the hard drive out and put it in a case and plug it into my girlfriends macbook to back up. I'd just prefer to use my macbook than my pc (and i don't have the pc version of the progams I need) and the macbook isn't worth spending on fixing unless a repair is super cheap.

If anyone can help and be bothered reading all that. That would be great. And appologies for the long winded story but I guess it's the details people need to decide what may be wrong.
 

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