How a repair works with us

What it usually is. Most of the time the port is packed with pocket lint and the cable never seats properly. When it isn’t that, it’s usually a worn connector or the charging line on the logic board, and you tell those apart by measuring, not by looking.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t dig inside the port with a needle or a paperclip: the contacts are a millimetre across and bend without you noticing. And stop forcing the cable into the position that works, because every time you do you damage the pin a little more.

What it usually is. If calls come through and it still buzzes, the phone is alive and what has failed is whatever puts the image on screen. Usually the panel or its connector, and sometimes the backlight line on the board, which leaves a black screen on a phone that’s working underneath.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t leave it plugged in and switched on for days hoping the picture comes back, and above all don’t squeeze or twist the frame to make contact: if a connector is loose, all you achieve is a scratched panel and more stress on the board.

What it usually is. Water rarely kills an iPhone on the spot: what it does is start corroding the board, and the damage keeps spreading for days. That’s why a phone that seems fine after a soaking can fail two weeks later.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t put it in rice: it dries nothing inside and pushes starch and dust into the connectors. Don’t switch it on or put it on charge, which is what turns damp into powered corrosion, and don’t use a hairdryer, because the heat drives the water further in. Turn it off and bring it in as soon as you can.

What it usually is. An iPhone that doesn’t even stir when you plug it in usually has a power problem on the logic board. Often it isn’t the battery but a component on the power-up line, and nothing can be said for sure until the current draw is measured.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t leave it on a fast charger for hours to see if it reacts: if there’s a short circuit, those hours do more harm. And don’t open it at home to disconnect the battery, because on an iPhone that step is full of ribbon cables that tear at the first slip.

What it usually is. Sometimes it’s a software problem and a reinstall settles it, but when the reinstall fails halfway or the loop comes back, there is almost always an unstable component on the board. Either way, the first job is getting what’s inside to safety.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t restore it from a computer before you have asked someone: a restore wipes the contents, and if the fault is on the board you end up with no data and the same fault.

What it usually is. Lithium batteries age and lose capacity, and when it also shuts down suddenly at 30 % it means it can no longer deliver the current peak the phone asks for. Settings, Battery, Battery Health is the first clue.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t buy a loose battery online for someone to fit: the ones that arrive without the original circuit trigger non-genuine part warnings and sometimes swell within a year. And if it’s already swollen, stop charging it and keep it out of your pocket.

What it usually is. This usually shows up after a knock, a swim or a previous repair. It can be the antenna, a pinched ribbon cable or the signal amplifier on the board, and putting the SIM in another phone already rules out part of it.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t run five restores or change carrier hunting for the fault: if the radio section is damaged, no setting will bring it back and you only lose time, and sometimes data.

What it usually is. On almost every recent Android the glass, the touch layer and the panel are bonded into a single block, so replacing just the glass isn’t a thing: the whole assembly goes. Whether the image works and touch doesn’t, or the other way round, doesn’t change the part, but it does tell you the phone underneath is still alive and that the data can be pulled off before anything is opened.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t keep using it with splintered glass or stick a protector over the crack to get by: pressing on it drives the shards inwards, cutting the touch layer and the seal. If you can also see a dark patch spreading or coloured lines, stop using it, because that grows every day and takes the working part of the screen with it. And back up your photos today, while there is still a screen to do it from.

What it usually is. The simple explanations go first: lint packed into the bottom of the port and a cable that has broken inside. When it’s neither, the port is worn or the board has stopped managing charging. On some models that port sits on a small daughterboard and on others it’s soldered to the main one, and that difference decides whether the job is a module swap or soldering under a microscope.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t scrape inside the port with a needle, a paperclip or a toothpick: the contacts are hair-thin and once bent no cable will grip them again. And don’t leave it charging overnight in the position that works, with the cable propped up by a book: a bad contact heats the port, and the battery sits right next to it.

What it usually is. A phone that shrugged off a splash the day it left the factory tells you nothing about the state of its seals now: gaskets dry out, and any previous opening — a screen, a battery — leaves them worse than they were. And water doesn’t break things outright, it corrodes: the damage keeps advancing for days, which is why a phone that seemed to have survived fails a fortnight later.

What not to do in the meantime. Not rice: it dries nothing inside and pushes starch and dust into the connectors. Don’t switch it on to check, and above all don’t put it on charge, because damp with current running through it corrodes far faster. No hairdryer and no radiator either, since heat drives the water further in. Turn it off, don’t shake it, and bring it in quickly.

What it usually is. Two very different situations hide behind the same picture. One is software — an update that stopped halfway, a damaged partition — and the other is the board: power that never comes up, memory that doesn’t answer, a chip that heats and cuts out. The first move is to put it on a lab supply and watch how much current it draws: a phone pulling nothing and a phone pulling too much aren’t the same problem.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t run a factory reset or wipe anything from recovery mode to break the loop: if the fault is on the board you’re no better off, and the photos are gone as well. On Android the storage is soldered and encrypted against that particular phone, so whatever is erased there isn’t coming back. And don’t leave it on a fast charger for hours hoping it reacts.

What it usually is. The iPad’s charging port is soldered straight to the logic board and takes a lot of abuse: leaning on the cable once is enough to bend a pin. Other times it’s just compacted dirt inside, or a charger that doesn’t supply enough current.

What not to do in the meantime. Stop pushing the cable in if it goes in crooked or hits something: each attempt can tear a track off the board, and at that point it’s no longer a port replacement.

What it usually is. On most iPads the glass and the touch layer are a single part, with the display panel underneath. A picture that still looks fine doesn’t mean a polish will do: if touch misbehaves or splinters come away, the whole glass has to go.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t keep using it with broken glass or tape a screen protector over it to keep going: the splinters work their way under the frame, they cut, and once they reach the panel underneath a cheap repair turns into an expensive one.

What it usually is. In a hard fall what usually gives way isn’t the screen but the board connectors and the chassis itself, which bends and stops holding the modules in place. An iPad can look perfectly intact and still refuse to start.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t try to straighten the chassis by pressing on it: the battery is glued to the back, it’s very thin and it punctures with almost nothing. And don’t charge it if it has ended up bent or bulging.

What it usually is. Almost always the battery, which has swollen and is pushing the panel out from inside. It’s a fault that gets worse on its own and ends up breaking the screen if it’s left alone.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t charge it, don’t leave it in the sun or in the car, and don’t try to press the screen back down: a swollen lithium battery burns if it’s punctured. Keep it switched off somewhere cool until you bring it in.

What it usually is. A Mac that gives no sign at all when you press the button is almost never a software problem. It’s usually power: the charger, the charging line, or a component on the board stopping the internal supply from coming up.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t try borrowed chargers of dubious origin or chain resets for hours: if there’s a short, every attempt heats the same spot. And if it also got wet, don’t switch it on.

What it usually is. If the fan spins, the keyboard lights up or it answers the startup chime, the computer is running and what has failed is the picture: backlight, display cable or the panel itself. On some MacBook Pro models it’s a well-known cable that wears out from opening and closing the lid.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t keep opening and closing the lid to see whether it comes back: if the display cable is the problem, every open brings the moment it breaks for good a little closer.

What it usually is. Coffee, beer and sparkling water are far worse than plain water: they leave sugar and salts that keep corroding the board for weeks. The repair is to open it, clean it and neutralise the residue before the corrosion reaches the chips.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t switch it on or plug in the charger to see whether it still works: that’s what burns the board. Don’t stand it on a radiator or point a hairdryer at it. Hold the power button until it shuts down, leave it open and face down, and bring it in quickly.

What it usually is. On MacBooks with the butterfly keyboard (2015-2019) a single speck of dust under a key is enough. On later models it’s usually the module or the ribbon that connects it. When keys that sit far apart fail at the same time, that points at the controller.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t blast it with compressed air or lever the keycaps off with a knife: the clips on those keyboards snap the moment they are forced, and a broken key means replacing more than needed replacing.

What it usually is. It can be the cable (both MagSafe and USB-C cables break inside), the port, or the charging line on the board. No light on the charger doesn’t mean the charger is the problem.

What not to do in the meantime. Stop using a charger that sparks, gets hot or has a frayed cable, and don’t charge through a port that has gone loose or scorched: at that point it isn’t just the port, it’s what sits behind it.

What it usually is. A trackpad that stops clicking is the classic sign of a swollen battery: the battery sits right underneath and pushes up. Shutting down without warning points at the same thing, or at a battery that can no longer deliver current.

What not to do in the meantime. Stop charging it and don’t carry it squeezed between books in a backpack. A swollen battery doesn’t deflate, and punctured it burns: don’t pierce it or try to lever it out.

What it usually is. The Mac powers on but can’t find a system to boot from. It can be the drive, a damaged system or, on Macs with storage soldered to the board, a board fault. The urgent thing here isn’t getting it to boot: it’s the data.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t reinstall macOS and don’t use Disk Utility to repair or erase the drive: that’s the fastest way to lose for good what could still be recovered. Shut it down and leave it off until somebody looks at the drive.

What it usually is. A laptop that doesn’t stir when you press the button with the charger plugged in almost never has a Windows problem: it has a power problem. Inside the board the supply rails come up in a chain, and one rail failing to rise leaves everything dead with nothing visible to point at. A shorted charging controller, a cracked capacitor or a track eaten away by damp all look exactly like this, and they are told apart by measuring current draw on the bench. This is the ground where repairing a board component by component changes the ending, because the usual answer to it’s a new board or nothing.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t repeat the unplug-and-hold-the-button trick twenty times over: if there’s a short, every attempt heats the same component again and one point to repair becomes three. Don’t try the charger from another laptop just because the plug fits, since neither the voltage nor the negotiation is the same on every machine. And if it got wet or took a fall before this started, say so when you bring it in: it changes where the search begins.

What it usually is. That message doesn’t say the battery is dead: it says the system has decided not to charge it. It can be the battery, the gauge reporting its state, or the charging circuit on the board, and it’s the fault most often “solved” by buying a battery that was never the problem. It gets clearer once you check whether the charger is delivering the voltage it should and whether current is actually going in.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t order a battery online before you know the battery is the problem: if the charging circuit is what failed, the new one won’t charge either. Don’t reach for a universal charger with swappable tips to get by. And don’t settle into working plugged in for months, because a battery that drops to zero and stays there really does degrade, and that’s the one that swells later.

What it usually is. On most laptops today the charging port — the old round barrel or a USB-C — is soldered straight to the board. When somebody trips over the cable, the yank doesn’t stop at the connector: it tears off the pads and tracks underneath. Putting it back is therefore not a part swap but soldering under a microscope and rebuilding what came away.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t charge it holding the cable by hand or wedging it with a book at the angle that works: an intermittent contact throws tiny sparks at the joint itself, and that heat burns tracks until there is nothing sound left to solder to. If the port runs unusually hot, smells, or has gone loose in its housing, unplug it and leave it alone until someone looks at it.

What it usually is. Cutting out dead only under load points at two places: temperature or power delivery. Either the machine hits its thermal limit and shuts down to protect itself, or the stage feeding the processor and the graphics can no longer hold the current peak they ask for and the rail sags for an instant. On laptops with dedicated graphics the two usually travel together. Logging temperatures and draw while it’s being pushed separates them without opening anything.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t use it on a bed, a sofa or your lap: the vents end up covered and the machine breathes its own hot air. Don’t leave it running flat out to see whether it holds, because every hard cut is a risk to the file system and one day the thing that won’t start is Windows itself. And don’t take the bottom cover off or leave it loose so it can breathe: without it the air comes in where it should not and the heatsink stops pulling heat away.

What it usually is. Almost always the cooling underneath is choked: the thermal paste has dried out and the heatsink sits behind a felt of dust and hair that no air gets through. When the processor can’t shed heat it throttles itself to avoid cooking, and that’s what you feel as slowness. Less often the heat is the effect rather than the cause: a drive on its last legs, or something working away in the background that nobody asked for.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t stand it on fabric or cover it while it’s working. Don’t blast it with canned air while the fan is spinning: forced round like that the fan behaves as a generator, and that spike can take out the electronics driving it, while the dust ends up further in rather than out. And don’t call it fixed by pinning the fans at maximum with an app: that mutes the warning, it doesn’t clear the heatsink.

What it usually is. If the machine starts up — fan, drive light, backlit keyboard — the fault lies in the chain that carries the picture to the panel, not in the power-up. It can be the backlight, the display cable that runs through the hinge, the panel itself, or the video output on the board. One test costs nothing and says a great deal: plug in an external monitor. If the external screen shows a picture, the computer is healthy and the problem lives from the hinge upwards.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t keep opening and closing the lid to see whether it comes back: if the cable running through the hinge is what has broken, every open severs one more strand and an intermittent picture becomes no picture at all. And don’t tap the bezel or press on it to make contact, which is how a panel that still worked ends up cracked.

What it usually is. The hinge is screwed into plastic anchors inside the lid. Once it seizes, all the force of opening the laptop lands on those anchors: they snap, and as they snap they push the case apart from inside. That’s why you first see a corner lifting, then a gaping seam, and finally a pinched display cable or a cracked panel. Fixing it properly isn’t tightening the screw, it’s rebuilding the anchor so there is something to hold on to again.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t carry on opening and closing it carefully in the hope it holds: every open pulls a little harder on what’s already broken, and the next stage costs far more. Don’t force it shut or carry it in a bag half closed. And don’t reach for superglue: cyanoacrylate leaves the plastic brittle, and then there is no sound material left to anchor the repair to.

What it usually is. If individual keys fail, the keyboard itself is the suspect: dried drink underneath, a punctured membrane, worn contacts. If the whole thing dies at once, or goes down together with the trackpad, look further in: both hang off latched ribbon connectors on the board, which work loose with a knock or after years of heat, and behind them sits the controller that drives them. A USB keyboard settles a lot: if everything works over USB, the computer is fine and it’s the internal input that has failed.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t tug the ribbon cable or push it back in without releasing the connector latch: they are foils a fraction of a millimetre thick and they crack the moment they are bent, and then it isn’t the keyboard any more, it’s the board. Don’t lever the keycaps off with a knife to clean underneath, because the clips don’t go back. And if it died right after a drink went over it, don’t switch it on: that’s a spill, not a keyboard.

What it usually is. On a laptop the keyboard is the lid: whatever you spill goes down between the keys and lands straight on the board, which sits right underneath. Water is the least bad of them; sugared coffee, beer, fizzy drinks and soup leave salts and sugars that keep eating the tracks for weeks, with the machine switched off and put away. The job is to open it quickly, disconnect the battery, clean the board thoroughly and rebuild whatever the corrosion has already taken.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t switch it on to see whether it still works, which is exactly what burns the board. Hold the power button until it shuts down completely, take the charger off and leave it open and face down on a towel. No hairdryer, no radiator, no oven: heat drives the liquid further in, and caramelised sugar on the chips is worse still. And don’t wait a few days for it to dry, because what moves in those days is the corrosion.

What it usually is. A drive that stops mounting can have a logical fault — a partition table wrecked by a power cut, a file system broken mid-write — or a physical one: the SSD electronics, worn-out cells, the mechanics of a spinning disk. A PC works in your favour here, because the storage almost always sits on a separate module and can be taken out and worked on away from the broken machine instead of waiting for it to boot. And the urgent thing isn’t getting the system back, it’s what’s inside.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t accept the automatic repair the system offers at startup and don’t run a disk check to see whether it sorts itself out: both write to the volume and, if there’s a physical fault underneath, they write right over what could still have been recovered. If it offers to format, say no. Don’t install recovery software onto the same drive you’re trying to recover. And if it’s a spinning disk and it clicks, unplug it and leave it unplugged.

What it usually is. Almost always a swollen battery pushing the glass out from inside. Apple acknowledged this as a defect on some models, but outside warranty the repair is replacing the battery and resealing the watch.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t charge it and don’t wear it in the shower or the pool with the screen lifted: the seal is gone and water goes straight to the electronics. And don’t try to press it shut.

What it usually is. Usually the charger itself or dirt between the puck and the back of the watch, but it can also be the charging coil or a battery that no longer takes a charge. Another charger and a clean back rule out half the cases.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t leave it all night on a charger you already know doesn’t work, and don’t charge it with a wet strap or with sweat and sun cream on the back: that’s where corroded contacts come from.

What it usually is. On the Apple Watch the glass, the touch layer and the panel are usually bonded into one block, and the watch is sealed against water on top of that. It can be replaced, but the seal has to be redone: it isn’t a matter of gluing on a piece of glass.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t take it into water or wear it swimming until it’s fixed, and don’t put tape over the crack: the adhesive seeps into the break and makes the repair harder.

What it usually is. That repeated click is the read arm of a mechanical drive trying to find its position and failing. It’s a physical fault: every minute it stays powered on it may be scoring the platters where your data lives.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t plug it in one more time to see whether it mounts today, don’t put it in the freezer (that forum trick destroys drives) and don’t knock it. Unplug it and leave it unplugged: the fewer times it spins up, the more can be recovered.

What it usually is. Deleting usually doesn’t destroy the data straight away: it marks the space as free. As long as nothing writes over it there is a good chance of getting it back; once something does write there, that chance drops sharply.

What not to do in the meantime. Stop using that drive and that computer, don’t install free recovery software onto the affected volume (it installs right on top of what you want back) and don’t run a backup onto that drive.

What it usually is. The Mac can see the drive but can’t make sense of its partition table or its file system. Often the data is all still there and only the index is damaged; other times there is a physical fault behind it.

What not to do in the meantime. Don’t click Initialise or Erase, however insistent the message is: it’s exactly what the system asks for and exactly what you must not do. Eject it and unplug it.