new MacBook to me

Good evening all,

I was looking thru my local craigslist ads here in the Chicago metro area and found a unibody MacBook for sale that supposedly was dropped and the keyboard and trackpad no longer worked and responded to his ad with a price of one third of his asking price, figured he would say no since i really didn't need it. he said he would sell it for that price, but it works fine with an external keyboard and mouse. brought it home, turned it on and the keyboard and track pad were inop. took the bottom cover off of it and looked to see if i saw anything broken which there doesn't appear to be. took the battery out to see if maybe the fall caused it to start swelling and the battery appears fine. managed to somehow erase the hd and then the hd quit working.... couldn't find the drive to install snow leopard on it, the only version of the os i have on disk. dug around in my junk drawer found a hd i took out of my dell when i replaced it with a ssd drive. installed that hard drive in the mac, installed snow leopard with no issues using the external keyboard and mouse. computer worked fine that way so i connected to Apple support chat, the person gave me a link to get el capitan, installed that with no issues again using the external keyboard and mouse. used it for a few hours this morning, worked fine with no problems except for using the external mouse and keyboard. decided to try using the built in keyboard and mouse again and it instantly caused the MacBook to lock up and had to restart it by a forced shut down. took the cover off again, removed the battery and again didn't see any damage so put it back together and decided to install Sierra. was using it in the local starbucks and decided to try something, i somehow managed to disable the track pad in settings and tried the keyboard. all the keys work without issue except for the zero key and the 2 other keys next to the zero key. i am wondering if the plot thickens on this and it got a little wet first and is now drying out.....

Bottom line with electronic items. Damage is not always visible to the naked eye...or under magnification (thus stop trying to see visible damage). Same with liquid damage. Electrical shorts due to a liquid spill are not always visible either.

Definitely sounds like this computer was damaged...some how...some way (a drop as mentioned...and/or liquid). Actually sounds like you're very lucky it's working as well as it is.

- Nick

since writing this post, it appears the MacBook has returned to its normal function, not sure if it was just the damaged hard drive and needing time to reset itself or if it decided it likes its new home. now debating if i want to upgrade it to a ssd drive and upgrade the ram from its current 3 gb or not. it seems to be working quite well with its current set up with the stock hd and 3 gb of ram running sierra. kinda looks like what ever was bothering it will remain a mystery......

pitbull60077 said:

kinda looks like what ever was bothering it will remain a mystery......

Click to expand...

Congrats that it's working better. But be warned...if the computer was damaged in some way...the issues may return.

- Nick

that is true....but i think i see why people say computers have a mind of their own

the MacBook is behaving better every day which is a pleasant surprise.... the battery would only last about an hour and a half, which really isn't any surprise since it has 1225 cycles on it. brought it to the starbucks and used it for almost 2 hours this morning and it only used 45 percent of its capacity according to the battery indicator in the menu bar. kinda looks like this MacBook really does have a mind of its own and seems to like its new owner. really a pleasant surprise and makes it that much better of a deal. got it for $25. and the person was originally asking 95 for it.