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Macbook Keyboard Rivets

Removing a broken MacBook keyboard

TLDR: can’t remove rivets; glue the new keyboard in with a medium thickness cyanoacrylate

The spilled coffee on my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2012) disabled only one key on the keyboard. Unfortunately, it was the power button. I confirmed that my MacBook Pro wasn’t completely dead by shorting the pads on the system board that I found on insidemylaptop.com.

The top case (which includes the keyboard and trackpad) of the MacBook Pro can be replaced, with new parts on eBay that cost about $100. I also found that the just the keyboard can be purchased on eBay for about $20.

I used iFixit’s MacBook Pro 15″ Retina Display Mid 2012 Upper Case Assembly Replacement guide to disassemble the computer, then found some YouTube videos detailing ripping out the old keyboard.

MacBook Pro Retina keyboard rivets

The problem for me was when I pulled the old keyboard away from the top case, the rivets remained in the case. I later thought that pulling on the keyboard very sharply when I removed it would have pulled the rivets out too.

There were screws included with my replacement keyboard but the now the problem was how to remove the rivets from the top case. I found various solutions that included drilling them out, using a screwdriver and hammer to pry them out and removing the rivets by pulling them out with diagonal flush side cutters. The latter seemed like the best solution, except that I didn’t have that tool.

It then occurred to me that Apple reparability scores were always very low because they glued everything together. So, I decided to glue the keyboard in using a medium cyanoacrylate glue.

Working from one side of the keyboard to the other, I used less than a drop of glue on top of each of the protruding rivets. The glue (use a medium thickness cyanoacrylate) ran down around the rivet and under the keyboard mounting plate, fastening it to the top case. I pressed down on the keyboard for a few seconds to hold it flush with the top case until the glue set.

When I put the computer back together, I felt that gluing the keyboard in worked as well as the screws. Typing on the new keyboard felt completely solid and I saved a lot of effort in not having to remove the rivets.

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MacFUSE file system is not available Error

I try to keep up with the latest Windows and macOSs by participating in the Windows Insider Preview program and the Apple Developer Program. I run both of these OSs on a Macbook Pro Retina (mid-2012). As of today, that is Windows 10 Build 16232.1000 and macOS 10.13 beta 2 (17A291m).

A lot of the time, things don’t work because I am running beta OSs with released apps.

One of the recent problems I encountered with macOS High Sierra (17A291j) was a kernel panic when I was using Paragon NTFS for Mac 15 with Dropbox (v30.3.14). I don’t know if it’s a good idea, but my Dropbox directory for both Windows and Mac is the same directory on an NTFS volume. Every time I started Dropbox, I would get a kernel panic. I opened a support ticket with Paragon Software and a few days later they sent me a new version that had the same problem.

For interoperability between the two OSs, read/write capability really helps. In the macOS (High Sierra), NTFS read/write capability is not native. I was very happy with Paragon NTFS for Mac 15 until I started getting kernel panics. On the Windows side, I haven’t found something that will read the Apple File System (APFS) in macOS 10.13.

With earlier versions of MacOS, I had used the open source NTFS-3g. When Paragon NTFS for Mac 15 stopped working in my situation with Dropbox, I decided to try the commercial version of Tuxera’s NTFS for Mac. This seemed to work ok until I installed the macOS High Sierra Developer Beta 2 Update 1 (17A291m).

On booting macOS, I would get the error message:

Aligned I/O enabled.
CBCIO enabled.
/System/Library/Filesystems/fusefs_txantfs.fs//Support/10.9/tufs/tufsfs.kext failed to load -… check the system/kernel logs for errors or try kextutil(8).
the MacFUSE file system is not available (71)

I traced this error to Gatekeeper in macOS 10.13. After I allowed the software, Tuxera NTFS for Mac started working again.

Allow software from Tuxera in macOS System Preferences Security & Privacy Setting
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Windows Server 2012 on a Macbook

After the failure of an old computer running Windows Server 2003, I setup Windows Server 2012 on a Macbook.

Years ago, I set up a Sony Vaio PCG-Z505HS running Windows Server 2003 at home so I could keep up with Macs and Active Directory. When I recently experienced problems with DHCP and DNS, I discovered that the Vaio had died. There was no LED power indication. My troubleshooting consisted of jiggling the power connector and checking the power supply voltage. When I measured voltage from the AC adaptor, I gave up, using the rationale that it had lived its useful life. The Vaio, with a Pentium 3, 500 MHz CPU, was introduced in January 2000.

Coincidentally, I had a hardware failure in my Macbook (late 2006), so I decided to repurpose it as a domain server using an evaluation version of Windows Server 2012.

The Windows Server 2012 installation was simple using the Server with a GUI mode installation. The Server Manager and configuration tools greatly simplify the setup. With Windows Server 2012 on a Macbook running silicon introduced in 2006 – an Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T7200 that has Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x), the next step is to try virtualization. As a Macbook running OS X, I successfully ran VMware Fusion VMs running Ubuntu and Windows 2000, though I forsee the 3 GB of RAM in the current system will be a limiting factor.

The best part about running an Active Directory domain at home is joining computeres to the domain. The welcome message says, “Welcome to the lower_slobbovia domain.