So, I woke up today morning and with dedication, thought I'd give it a last go before i empty my wallet by showing it to a computer repair store, none of whom by the way were confident they could fix the problem ('oh, we can try drilling or pliers, but not sure we can do anything other than that.') After a couple hours, I was able to unscrew one of the screws by essentially cutting it half with a knife and using an ordinary screw driver. All this trying lead to the screws being stripped, and i was left with a noisy old fan, a new fan in a sealed bag beside me, and screws that wouldn't come off even if i tempted them with a million dollars! Not to mention, I'd voided my Apple warranty.

I tried screwdriver upon screwdriver, and it just wouldn't come off. It arrived, and all was going well until I got to unscrewing the old fan, which had screws that seemed they were of a different size. They said it could take 2 - 3 weeks, so this being my primary laptop, I went ahead and bought a fan of the same model off of eBay. My fan started to make a noise 2 - 3 weeks ago, so I contacted Apple warranty. Whoever wants to ruin their day can listen to my story.

I swear that if I didn't come across this post, I would've been in a mental hospital by now. UPDATE: the new MacBook Pros introduced in April 2010 drop the Torx screws for Triwing screws you'll need a Triwing screwdriver to complete the repair. You also might want to get some compressed air to clean out the dusty innards of your machine (I added one to my order just to make it to the $25 free shipping mark at Amazon, and it ended up being quite handy).Īs reported in the comments below, this repair works on both 15' and 17' versions, going back to 2006 and including the newer 'unibody' models (unibody disassembly instructions are slightly different, but the repair requires the exact same set of tools). You'll need a couple of tools to perform this operation, but you would need these same tools to install a replacement fan as well, so you're still saving fifty bucks (or more, if you were going to take it in to be repaired). As any google or youtube search for 'noisy macbook pro fan' produces thousands of results, I hope this saves someone fifty of their hard-earned bucks. Most people will tell you you need a new fan for $50, but I decided to try to fix it instead, and so far (it's been two weeks nine months), the repair has worked great. My three year-old MacBook Pro recently started emitting a constant racket from its left fan (which sounds something like this).

How to disassemble a 2006 macbook pro