fiona.mac
Level 1 (15 points)
iPad

Q: iMac 27" Black Screen?

For 6 long and painful weeks, my 27" iMac (10.7.5) has intermittently turned itself to sleep mode (black screen). It's driving me up the wall and sent my productivity through the floor. You'll be in the middle of something and whammo, black screen. I have to push the power button to get the screen to work again. It doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse.

 

The screen turns black when you're on the Internet, playing quicktime files, using Microsoft office, so it happens across different applications... it happens on my account, my daughter's account, the guest account. It is indiscriminate, it just does it whenever it feels like it, but not all the time. If it shuts down video, the audio still plays, there is just a black screen with no picture to watch.

 

The computer is 8 months old and I have Apple Protection as well, so that's not the problem, but I see other people have experienced a similar issue and I'm up for suggestions as to what you think might be causing the problem.

 

So far, these are the fixes that have been done and NOT fixed the problem:

 

  • OSX has been reinstalled twice
  • The logic Board has been replaced
  • RAM has been replaced
  • The graphics card has been replaced

 

The tech is coming back out Monday to replace the power supply and the screen. If this doesn't work I'm told I'll be reissued with a new machine.

 

So any other suggestions out there? Is it possessed by a ghost? Cursed? Just should be declared a lemon?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.5), Bought July 2012, Built mid 2011

Posted on May 2, 2013 9:56 PM

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Q: iMac 27" Black Screen?

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  • by lyndy33,

    lyndy33 lyndy33 May 29, 2016 9:09 AM in response to Murrfk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 29, 2016 9:09 AM in response to Murrfk

    Hi,

     

    First time I have posted!  But have a 27" imac mid 2010 and two weeks ago it started to experience the black screen if the setting was above 3 or 4 on brightness. External monitor worked fine so I'm thinking maybe not a hardware issue,  After reading many different threads, I upgraded to 10.11.6 called apple and I think we did this - open system preferences go to display, turn the brightness the whole way up, then go to color, and calibrate, and save the setting. It worked for me! 24 hours in and like new. Good Luck

  • by JLSphoto,

    JLSphoto JLSphoto Jun 11, 2016 4:12 PM in response to fiona.mac
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jun 11, 2016 4:12 PM in response to fiona.mac

    I've had this problem as well. I just got it to stop though. Here's what seems to have worked for me:

    It was either A. Switching to a wired keyboard or B. Blowing compressed air through the vent covers to better increase air flow to computer.


    To do the second one, you can just peel off the black glass screen (it's apparently only attached by magnets. Peel from top) and shoot the compressed air down through the ventilation holes. I don't know which fixed it, but now I'm at full brightness with no shutdown, when I previously could only run with ZERO brightness. Hope this helps someone else.

  • by stevefromfiley,

    stevefromfiley stevefromfiley Jun 15, 2016 9:49 AM in response to JLSphoto
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jun 15, 2016 9:49 AM in response to JLSphoto

    As you can see from earlier posts the black screen problem has been with me for 4 years now.I have tried every suggestion on this site and others.

    Now for the spanner in the works!!!Up until last week my 2010 iMac has not black screened for almost 6 months,i have had the brightness on full,medium and low and it has been fine.I have not cleaned it out or changed anything.Then last week it decided to black screen and after several cmd option eject presses it eventually came back on and stayed on for about 2 minutes.Since last week it has worked for a couple of days on nearly max brightness,i have used my Ps4 via remote play so i can use the Mac's screen to play my Ps4,watched loads of youtube videos,edited photos and general other things.Then all of a sudden the black screen returns.

    I'm glad people are finding their own solutions for this annoying problem and please keep posting to let myself and others know about any changes.

    Steve

  • by stevefromfiley,

    stevefromfiley stevefromfiley Jun 15, 2016 10:09 AM in response to stevefromfiley
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jun 15, 2016 10:09 AM in response to stevefromfiley

    As you can see from earlier posts the black screen problem has been with me for 4 years now.I have tried every suggestion on this site and others.

     

    Now for the spanner in the works!!!Up until last week my 2010 iMac has not black screened for almost 6 months,i have had the brightness on full,medium and low and it has been fine.I have not cleaned it out or changed anything.Then last week it decided to black screen and after several cmd option eject presses it eventually came back on and stayed on for about 2 minutes.

     

    Since last week it has worked for a couple of days on nearly max brightness,i have used my Ps4 via remote play so i can use the Mac's screen to play my Ps4,watched loads of youtube videos,edited photos and general other things.Then all of a sudden the black screen returns.

     

    I'm glad people are finding their own solutions for this annoying problem and please keep posting to let myself and others know about any changes.

    Steve

  • by ED_W,

    ED_W ED_W Jul 10, 2016 12:21 PM in response to stevefromfiley
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Desktops
    Jul 10, 2016 12:21 PM in response to stevefromfiley

    I've had the intermittent black screen problem for a few years now on a mid 2010 iMac. This past May it got so bad that I could bring it to Apple for the tech to see it happen. I ended up with a new backlight board which seemed to solve the problem until last week. Again the screen would go black unless the brightness was set all the way down.

     

    Brought it back to Apple again and the tech concluded that the LCD display would need to replaced but that I would have to find an independent repair shop because it was too old for Apple to fix. Found a shop that would do the repair with only a 30 warranty for $500. That was unacceptable so now my only choice was to replace this piece of junk.

     

    Then a few days later the display started working reliably again but only at full brightness or minimum brightness. Any setting in between and it instantly goes black.

    This is just crazy and infuriating. I don't think that Apple's techs have a clue as to whats going on with this problem.

  • by paulmcg123,

    paulmcg123 paulmcg123 Aug 28, 2016 11:37 PM in response to ED_W
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Aug 28, 2016 11:37 PM in response to ED_W

    I just started having this issue on my late 2009 27inch iMac. I run a crippled version of 10.7.5, some quartz related kexts removed because of a dodgy ATI Radeon 4850 video card. I came across this blog and tried a few of the keyboard related solutions, but none worked. I saw one post about loose connections on the monitor that looked useful, so I removed the screen, unscrewed and pulled the lcd monitor out a bit. Everything inside was filthy with dust, so I pulled it off completely, vacuumed and air sprayed everything. I noticed the video card heat sink was particularly bad. Put it all back, checked every connection, screwed everything back up and put the screen back. So far so good, its been about 4 hours with the screen on about 70% brightness. The temp hasn't been above 40C, usually about 47C on 50% brightness. I always have to nurse this pos along, a new one would cost about AUD$2,700  and I can't really justify that. Maybe when it finally dies I'll go for a Mac mini and a Acer 28" 4k monitor or something.

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