Yeah, with a vacuum nozzle running close by to prevent the aluminum debris from falling inside. Tricky part if this ever became a real consideration would be figuring out just where to make that hole, and if the battery would be near enough to provide reasonable access. Plus being 100% confident that cutting such a hole wouldn't cut or disturb something inside. Need X-Ray vision.
A shame they changed the design from the original slab iMacs... the back was plastic. You could drill a hole without worries into that. On the other hand I think those boards were facing forward.
Yes they faced forward. On my early model, I remember seeing the battery after removing the LCD when I replaced the HDD a few months ago.
According to the iFixit instructions, I have only a very rough idea where one might make some kind of access hole. Looks like it's maybe a few inches above the center bottom of the case, above the RAM door. If so, the stand would be in the way and would probably need to be removed. Or maybe nearer the right side, since the optical drive needs to be removed for access to the logic board. Would anyone else care to take look and try to determine where on the back case it would be? Also is there anything covering the logic board where the battery sits? If there is, that would be a deal breaker. Does it look like such a hole would provide adequate access--maybe using a pair of forceps insulated at the ends to grab it once its pried out with a spudger?
And while I'm at it, does it look like the board would be forbiddingly close to the back to make this kind of cut, even with a good carbide fine teeth hole saw? Unless it can be determined (very unlikely) that there's enough room, another problem would be needing to do this without a pilot bit, as that would likely enter too far into the interior.
Or, since there's no way to know any of this with any certainty, please just tell me that this project is too crazy.
Also is there anything covering the logic board where the battery sits? If there is, that would be a deal breaker.
I'd say that is the obstacle. I don't think there is a clear line of sight between the logic board and the back of the case. Looking at the logic board in situ Step 32 and then pulled away Step 33*, reference the green circuit board in the two photos and there shows a whole lot of other stuff (a fan?) underneath the green circuit board which would appear to block any clear path from the back of the case to the battery.
I think there's a large insulating pad/layer, to prevent shorting across bare metal. I know its there on the power supply bits but I don't recall if its there on the motherboard on your model. iFixit shows full disassemblies of some models, usually done right after they come out, and those would be useful for determining what's at the back of the case.
Thanks Roam, MB. Whether or not there's some kind of insulating pad covering the rear of the logic board (iFixit doesn't mention anything about this and I think they would, since such a pad, if it existed, would need to be removed for access to the battery), and even if there's nothing in the way back there, the one major unknown remains how to determine the position of a hole exactly above the battery, which is impossible while flying bind.
I made a few calls to various repair outfits, including one to an Apple Authorized, who said they wouldn't work on this machine, since if they break something they can't get parts from Apple any longer. Another one, not an AASP, said that they have never heard of a PRAM battery going bad on one of these machines. I did point out that that might be because usually something else, like a GPU, dies from overheating before that can happen, and they agreed--most people have no idea how hot these can get get before the SMC decides to ramp up the fans, and don't use any kind of fan control program.
Er, no, the pad I'm talking about would be affixed to the rear of the iMac, it wouldn't be a cover on the motherboard. If you can see in the iFixit instructions there's a similar pad behind the power supply when they remove it. Sometimes Apple just uses a thin plastic sheet with adhesive on one side cut to shape. Its just to stop shorting. If you look at a 2009-2012 MacBook Pro there's a similar layer over where the motherboard is located affixed to the bottom plate.
Guess that cutting through a pad affixed to the back would make a messy job even messier. Could have used a pair of X-Ray glasses in junior high school.
Glad to see this thread now focused on resetting SMC and PRAM for a while since that’s where I am right now.
The iMac has been running fine with El Cap - though loading/opening Google seems a bit slow, the search box is slow to show up - I could begin typing into the box much faster when Google opened in Snow.
Mr H’s MBP seems slower to him and is definitely slow to start up (it’s been a month since we installed El Cap).
The biggest issue for him is twice after the MBP was asleep for about 2.5 hours, he couldn’t get the MBP to wake up - this never happened before. And the fan was whirring whilst it was sleeping!
Nothing worked to wake it up, so finally we turned it off by holding the power button for 8+ seconds. Last week this happened for the first time and we got it back up and running and figured it was just a gremlin - maybe not.
Try each of these steps in this order before you reset the SMC. Test the issue after each troubleshooting step to see if the issue still occurs.
1.If your Mac isn't responding, force the Mac to shut down by pressing and holding the power button for 10 seconds. You'll lose any unsaved work in any open applications.
1.	Unplug the power adapter from your Mac and the electrical outlet for several seconds, then plug it back in.
This worked fine and he’s up and running the MBP and we will see if it occurs again. The fan seems to be working (which is to say it's quiet) as well.
On another site between step 3 & 4 is the step - "put the battery back in and reconnect the MagSafe plug."
I tried to digest the discussion above (for the iMac mostly, but the MBP too) on whether or not to hold the power button.
The guy who visited you probably did this, but a PRAM zap and SMC reset are usually a good idea after upgrading the OS.
He didn't stick around until the update finished - it was taking a long time for the 3 and I said I could finish it on my own.
... command option p and r until it bongs for PRAM zap, on an iMac just shut down and unplug it for at least 15-20 seconds then plug it back in. Portables have a key combination to hit... shift control option power all at once. The portable has to be powered off first.
I don't quite follow your instructions here - seems abbreviated from what I've read below - but I can figure out where you are coming from more or less.
I do this each time we have a thunderstorm - but leave iMac unplugged (or rather leave the UPS to which it is connected unplugged) for much longer than 15 seconds. I assume that's not equivalent to an SMC reset each time???
I recall some people getting bitten decades ago if they held down the CUDA button too long, though it never seemed to mind how long I held it down. And I finally learned what CUDA stood for (Capacitive Unit Discharge ASIC). Only took 23 years.
Which is probably a good thing since I read somewhere that one shouldn't do too many of these (or was that PRAM reset?)
I figured that I should go with the steps offered by Apple before doing it - and only do it if these steps don't solve the problem.
If you unplug it for 15 seconds or if you unplug it for 15 hours, the end result is the same. Once you go past the necessary time, more time doesn't make it any less or more effective. The only threshold is the minimum, although if you keep the iMac unplugged for months on end there's a battery on the motherboard that can expire and it's a pain to reach. Intel Mac Laptops only use the main battery.
I don't see any particular need to go through a lengthy diagnostic before performing an SMC reset, it either solves the problem or the situation continues as before, there is no third option. I would also do a PRAM (now called NVRAM, although it's still command option P and R for PRam) reset too, that often will cure woes. Typically I do the SMC reset and upon powering on I hold down command-opt-p-r until it chimes a couple times.
I can't believe your tech left you before the upgrade finished. What if it hadn't completed successfully? There are so many things that can go wrong at that point. Thankfully what you're seeing seems to be run-of-the-mill issues from a big OS jump, which an SMC & PRAM reset typically cures. Your systems would have stopped booting if the upgrade had gone wrong. Gah!
Another thing it could be is HD fragmentation, which tends to afflict upgrades. There is a pretty easy way to get around that if you're making bootable backups... just boot off the backup, erase the internal HD, then clone it back. The new copy should be substantially less fragmented than the original, provided its not doing a block transfer (which, as the name suggests, transfers blocks of data from one disk to another, fragmentation and all). Of course non-block backups take longer. If the bootable backup boots you can make the change at that point to disable block copy mode when copying the data back to the internal.
And as far as I know CCC, by default, will not do a block copy. Plus I think the only way to do a block copy with CCC is to be booted to a third disk--not the desired source or destination.
I can't believe your tech left you before the upgrade finished. What if it hadn't completed successfully? There are so many things that can go wrong at that point. Thankfully what you're seeing seems to be run-of-the-mill issues from a big OS jump, which an SMC & PRAM reset typically cures. Your systems would have stopped booting if the upgrade had gone wrong. Gah!...
He stayed until the upgrade to El Cap finished installing successfully, but then left me to do all the updates of software update in the App store, which I said I could finish up on my own. The problem we are seeing with Mr H's machine staying asleep with fan whirring didn't show up until almost 3 weeks after the upgrade to El Cap.
If you unplug it for 15 seconds or if you unplug it for 15 hours, the end result is the same. Once you go past the necessary time, more time doesn't make it any less or more effective. The only threshold is the minimum, although if you keep the iMac unplugged for months on end there's a battery on the motherboard that can expire and it's a pain to reach....
Mr H's MBP - so far so good. We'll see later today when it goes into long sleep for the afternoon - but the previous 2 events happened almost a week apart.
We leave all machines unplugged when we are away - usually no longer than 6 weeks. Haven't had trouble, yet. There is always my mac house call guy to change the battery, I guess if/when it's needed...
If I keep making backups - and have made several since the upgrade to El Cap - have I continued to copy the fragmentation onto the newer backups?
I have 4 different backups of each machine which I alternate in making backups every several days when we are doing a lot of work. Bootable backups, but I don't use TimeMachine.
FWIW - since I did the battery removal as described above, on the way to SMC but not there yet, his machine has been just fine (except that Google is slower than it was in Snow)
What I was suggesting is SuperDuper the boot drive to an external, boot off the external, then SuperDuper it back, this time using the option to erase the internal before copying. Alternately you can go into Disk Utility, select Macintosh HD, and erase it there, then SuperDuper it back.
Sorry, I thought you had a 2009+ MacBook Pro though, which have internal batteries. They can be removed and/or disconnected but its more complicated.
His MBP is mid? 2007 (I'm pretty sure) but there's no reason for you to apologize, you can't be expected to remember all our stuff!