15 FREE MacBooks - School Tossed them out! - Lets fix them!

hi guys welcome back to another huge freeze video in this video i'm going to be attempting to restore 15 2014 macbooks that i receive for free all these units were used in a private girls school and were destined for the bin at first glance all these machines are in varying conditions with dents scratches stickers and missing keys some laptops already have service tags describing issues that the unit was having in this lot i have 14 28 centimeter 2014 airs and one 33 centimeter model these machines were donated by ditmar in south australia who i believe had around 100 of these that he'd saved from the trash and had been repairing and selling them on these were the remaining ones he either couldn't or didn't have the time to fix he had a total of 29 macbooks left that he wanted to give me however was unwilling to post them so i reached out to my mate nathan better known as p siv right who lives in south australia i offered nathan half of the macbooks if he posted the rest to me and here we are nathan has already attempted to repair his lot i will leave a link to his video and channel down below so you can check it out later opening up the box we can see sitting on top is a macbook prompting us to look inside so that will definitely be the first one i'll unpack below it you can see all the other macbooks inside i'm eager to see what's hidden inside this laptop so let's open that up taking it out of the bubble wrap we can see that it's missing quite a lot of its internal components lifting up the screen we can see it's a handwritten note from the man himself p civ right it reads hey hugh i hope the laptops arrive safely and undamaged well some of them are definitely already damaged so good luck ps i was going to send over some eucalyptus oil however it is flammable combining that with over a dozen laptops sounds like a recipe for disaster here's a crude drawing instead keep up the great work it's now time to get the rest of these macbooks unpacked so we can get a closer look and do some testing on them before we can actually proceed with any kind of repair nathan has done a splendid job packaging and sending these across the country it's hard to imagine what all 100 macbooks would have looked like stacked up like this and it amazes me what companies and schools will throw out even if it's fixable or working when it's time to upgrade they have so much money they don't care and for some reason no one seems to be aware of this massive issue this is just the result of one school imagine how many working or fixable devices become e-waste every year my old high school did the same thing of course i had the pleasure of saving all those devices too with our macs unpacked it's time to begin testing them this first one when plugged in appears to be booting into an operating system when it then enters a mode that looks like recovery mode and then it enters this screen which asks for a six digit pin our second machine is a little worse for wear the base isn't screwed on and the battery is falling out of place only being held in with one screw flipping the device over i could plug it in and power it up at first nothing appeared on screen inside the fan was spinning but nothing else was happening a minute or two later it appeared with a blinking question mark our third machine we can power that on and it also looks like it's going to boot into an operating system but this one is passcode locked with a user account the fourth macbook has a sticky note indicating a damaged trackpad upon plugging it in the laptop resumed to the setup screen it appears someone couldn't click the shutdown option because of that trackpad i was able to get the trackpad to somewhat work and continued the setup until i arrived at the desktop of mac os which already had the school's custom wallpaper applied all in all a mostly working machine our next contender also has a sticky note saying a damaged trackpad plugging it in it immediately kernel panicked before restarting into an operating system after the computer booted up we saw another setup screen from here i tried pressing on the trackpad and as a result caused a small chip in the surface but now the trackpad works after setup the os looked similar to the previous macbook our next machine has a status of to be replaced this one works but has no backlight so the screen isn't visible the seventh macbook has no bottom cover no ssd bits of the keys are loose inside and when powered up has a blinking question mark our eighth machine boots up however has the same issue as our first macbook in that it boots to this screen indicating that the mac is disabled and to wait 60 minutes after 60 minutes it says wrong password try again without allowing you to try again according to the sticker our ninth laptop has suffered water damage in 2016 and a broken enter key in 2017 powering it on it lacks an os or ssd so it just has a blinking question mark our next laptop powering it up we get an apple logo and a progress bar shortly after we get a dreaded pin lock screen preceding our next laptop has a sticky note saying it has a smashed lcd flipping it over it's missing a bottom cover the battery looks like it has exploded and it is missing an ssd turning it on we can confirm it has a cracked lcd and on an external display has a blinking question mark our next mac also lacks an operating system our second last mac boots into an os but is passcode locked with a user account and our final laptop when powered on lights up but nothing appears on the display panel with the macbook connected to an external display we get the exact same issue with all our macbooks diagnosed it's time to start repairing i'm going to begin with this laptop the battery doesn't work it has a user account password but otherwise it's still functioning so i'm going to remove the bottom panel using a pentalobe 5 screwdriver removing the back panel you can see it's quite dusty inside although we can take care of that in a minute i'll disconnect our battery and unscrew it from its position unlike newer macbooks this battery isn't glued into place which makes replacements nice and easy this one looks a little bit beaten up but i will be replacing it with a brand new one with the battery in position i can tighten five screws into place to secure it down now i'll use an anti-static brush to clean off as much of the dust as possible as i'm already inside the machine i saw it as a good opportunity to replace the thermal paste after removing the heatsink i noticed half the processor had no thermal paste whatsoever i inspected another macbook to find the same issue it appears apple doesn't install any thermal paste on part of the processor so using some alcohol i cleaned them up and reinstalled plenty of thermal paste on both parts of our processor securing everything down into position i can reconnect the battery and turn my attention to cleaning the back spraying some alcohol i can wipe away any dust or residue inside cleaning out the fins i can reinstall our bottom cover and reinstall mac os on the laptop to remove the previous owner's password after that we've got a working macbook the next machine i'm going to be working on is this one with the loose bottom and battery from the looks of it this one just needs an ssd and some screws luckily i've got a whole box full of macbook and apple screws from a previous tech lot video i've also sourced out some new replacement screws for the bottom case reinstalling some screws to hold our battery in i can reinstall the bottom cover proceeding we'll attempt to repair this 33 centimeter model it looks to be in okay condition however is missing a lot of parts and is labeled as water damaged in my attempt to repair this water damaged macbook without spending any money on it is to clean any corrosion from the logic board with alcohol hopefully that fixes whatever issue this laptop might have a big giveaway to a water damaged device is obviously any corrosion but also whether the liquid indicators have turned red as you can see here taking a closer look at the screen connection you can see one of the pins looks a little bit burnt and on the motherboard there is a slight bit of corrosion i'll use a toothbrush and some alcohol to clean this off placing the board in a donor laptop with a magsafe board attached i can see the laptop powers on and even appears to be booting off of something although i am unable to get a display output from the device next up is our 2b replace laptop which has me a little bit curious as to why taking that back panel off and disconnecting the battery i noticed a red water indicator near the ssd as well as quite a bit of corrosion on the logic board indicating this laptop has come in contact with quite a bit of liquid i'm going to remove the motherboard and try the exact same process as we did with the 33 centimeter model to see if we can get it up and running now as we tested earlier this one shows signs of life but has no backlight this computer could be repurposed as a desktop computer if you connect an external display keyboard and mouse taking out our logic board we can get a closer look at the other side there is a little bit of corrosion on various components around the board so i'm going to use some alcohol and a brush to clean that all off reinstalling our logic board into position and reconnecting the cables we still have no backline however all is not lost remember the macbook with the cracked lcd well i plan to repair it by using the lcd from the water damaged macbook to make one fully working machine i'll need to remove both screens as i'm wanting to change over the display cable as the one from the water damaged laptop looks slightly corroded removing the display is a tedious and time-consuming process as the wi-fi cables run under the motherboard and are taped into position i'll need to repeat the exact same process for our other macbook so we can get its screen detached also with both screens removed we can get a closer look at that connector and see the pin looks a little dicey i'll remove the clutch cover and unscrew the wifi antenna and hopefully get access to the other end of that cable unfortunately the cable routes underneath the lcd requiring complete disassembly of the lcd panel as i didn't want to do that i just tried the water damage screen on the one with the working motherboard that wasn't the smartest idea and as a result this laptop now has no backlight for our next laptop we're going to be taking a look at the one with the damaged trackpad this is an extremely common issue on apple laptops given the design of the trackpad itself removing the battery and unscrewing the six screws and one cable securing in place the trackpad i'm going to push it out of the way and flip over the macbook where you can see a lot of crumbs and buildup underneath the trackpad cleaning that off i can reposition the trackpad and screw it into place that's it that's all that was required to fix this entire laptop throwing in the battery and giving everything a good clean this one will be up and running cleaning this laptop actually took the most amount of time as there was a lot of dirt around the sides of the laptop where the back panel connects to the frame of course i'll also clean up the back panel of all of these machines that i'm putting back together and clean them up as best i can without investing hours into them and making them a hundred percent perfect putting the back panel on we've got another working laptop a lot of the laptops here on out are needing new ssds as they are missing or damaged now a regular ssd that works in every other computer won't work in apple's macbook because apple doesn't want users upgrading or repairing their computer so they use their own proprietary connector as you can see here to get around this somebody has actually designed an adapter to make a normal m.2 nvme drive work in an apple laptop and thanks to them i can connect this standard ssd to an apple computer now when buying an ssd don't get a sata version of the m.2 drive these ssds are actually kind of confusing and it's easy to buy the wrong one you'll need an nvme drive to work in this macbook otherwise it won't be detected i'll need to reinstall the operating system on all of the computers that are needing such a task done to speed up the process i can install blank drives into a usb enclosure and simply clone the operating system onto the new ssd one of these macbooks actually already had an ssd installed although it wasn't being detected in recovery mode burning off of a usb flash drive i could see the drive itself was just uninitialized i could then clone an operating system to it and the laptop was back up and running this macbook only has 67 cycles on the battery which is pretty low it's now time to work on the strangest macbook i've ever seen it turns on the fans spin but nothing appears on the display no apple logo no question mark so i decided to take off the back panel which was only held in with two screws disconnect the battery and take out the ssd my original plan was to use that ssd in another machine you can see that keyboard connector is somewhat melted but still functional turning the laptop back on with no ssd installed you'll see it now comes up with a padlock this is known as an efi lock an efi lock is an on-device lock which apple most likely won't remove i've come across four in total in this slot there are various tools and methods people have used to remove these locks however this is an area i won't be covering this lock prevents you from changing the boot device booting into recovery by holding command r or single user mode by holding command s but what if you change the internal ssd well guess what pressing the power button we get a padlock one issue i've come across with three of my macbooks is that booting off of a working version of macos or a mac os installer brings you to a pin lock screen after messing around with the laptop i just couldn't get mac os installed so as apple clearly didn't want me to install mac os on a macbook i decided to just install linux alternatively you could also install windows but linux is a free operating system and i don't have any linux machines around so i saw this as an excellent opportunity our last macbook is apparently liquid contaminated and has a faulty enter key this laptop does boot but shows a blinking question mark i couldn't find any water indicators that had turned red so i threw in an nvme ssd with an operating system already installed put the back cover back on and we still had a blinking question mark i booted the laptop off of an external drive and you can see that the laptop itself is working has a battery cycle count of 388 and isn't detecting its internal ssd now before i reveal just how many macbooks i got working again and save from landfill i'll give them all a quick clean this is an important step for any used device it looks as though many of these have never been cleaned and some of these students definitely didn't take the best care of these macbook airs i'll do my best to remove any dirt stickers sticker residue and drawings on these devices on the base are stickers that are designed not to be removed so trying to pick them off or use solvents just didn't work i ended up using 400 degrees of hot air which worked wonders and allowed the sticker to peel off almost instantly the residue that was left behind easily cleared up with some adhesive remover the last thing that had to be cleaned was all those grotty keyboards and we're done so this is it out of the 15 macbooks in the lot 11 are now functional with operating systems installed and working batteries it's awesome to see so many macbooks saved from landfill while cosmetically not perfect that wasn't the point of repairing these some are still missing various keys which i'll need to buy replacements for for a rundown we have two water damaged two needing further repair eight fully functioning and three linux macbooks the three linux macbooks can also install windows but mac os just won't install at all all in all i think we did excellent with this lot shout out again to ditmar this is absolutely incredible mate you're truly amazing thanks so much for sending these in if you want to know what happened to the other 14 of these macbooks whether nathan can get them running or not be sure to check out his youtube video i'll leave it down below and in a card above and on that note this has been a huge jeffries video if you like what you saw hit that subscribe button and consider checking out the huge tech lot playlist for more videos just like this one and if you're looking for some tips or what tools i use to repair devices be sure to check out my website link which is down in the description that's all for this video and i'll catch you guys next time

Channel: Hugh Jeffreys

Views: 3,340,260

Keywords: Hugh, Jeffreys, Apple, iPhone, iPad, iPod, technology, repair, restore, restoration, MacBook air, ewaste, school, macbook, environment, right to repair

Id: EATdYG7h9IQ

Length: 18min 19sec (1099 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020