MacBook Pro Blank Screen (Built - in & External)

It also takes some people a while to find this place. It is, after all, in English. My guess would be that links to this thread eventually get posted on Apple/technical support related forums in non-English speaking countries, and those likewise affected come here and make the effort to communicate with us all in our language rather than theirs.

One would have to be extremely weird to troll a lengthy thread such as this with elaborate tales of fictitious hardware woes. Doubtless it does happen, but I would surely give people the benefit of the doubt as genuine victims rather than hoaxers.

Would you, istara?

Usually when a real hardware problem surfaces here 70% of people mentioning it come from the US, 20% from the UK and the rest of the world make up the balance. Generally, too, those experiencing it include everyone from the "old lags" who have been here for ever down to a smattering of newbies. In fact, the experienced posters almost invariably report the issues first, because they are likely to be tech savvy, heavy users. There is a very, very strange absence of ALL "the regulars" here.

The last time I saw a pattern like this here it involved an individual by the name of "Leonardo™" , who used a wide range of other aliases from many parts of the world, with names such as Burning Help, Tyler Durden, Vivi, Vivienne Westwood, Cindy Levy, The Resurrected, and many others. He favoured Euro and South and Central American locations for his many aliases , too, with the occasional US and UK address thrown in for good measure.

You may remember him? He was at peak activity at about the same time you first registered with the discussion boards.

It was a pretty sad story really. The guy clearly needed some help, and after one nasty episode there were suggestions of the need for police involvement. Ultimately he was politely asked to leave and most of his aliases were shut down, but he used so many that it was inevitable that some escaped.

So you will have to forgive my scepticism. When very unusual posting patterns, like the ones in this thread, appear it is only when I genuinely know at the very least one of the people experiencing the alleged issue that I start being prepared to accept that it may be of some general applicability. When I've asked everyone I know with an MBP about the matter (and that is quite a few people) and NONE of them seem to be suffering from it, just as none of the regulars here seem to be, in a thread with suspicious posting patterns like this one, I'm afraid my eyebrows start to rise all by themselves!

Now, as I've said, I'm sure a few posters here are genuinely having real issues. Graphics cards, regardless of the brand, fail from time to time, and many, many other different things can cause computers to fail to boot properly, resulting in a "blank screen at startup". I'm sure that those who are, indeed, in such a situation will feel indignant about my responses. I'm also sure that those who want to play the same sort of games as our old friend "Leonardo™" will pretend to be indignant, too, though. There is very little real evidence here though that any sort of systemic problem exists, despite the large number of unusual posts in thread.

So indignation isn't much use when trying to sort the wheat from the chaff , I'm afraid. All I'm left with is past experience and the very, very unusual posting pattern in this thread to make sense of it.

Cheers

Rod

Well, after you proved your lack of knowledge a few posts above, your credibility is not much higher than us "third-worlders"

But thankfully, it is not you that have to be convinced of the issue. People are bringing the laptops to Apple, and Apple knows about the problem, as they're fixing many MPBs for free even without Apple Care. Whatever people post here, they're talking to Apple, giving serial numbers, and sending their computers. That should be proof enough for them. Eventually I hope they do what's right and fix this for everyone for free. It's Apple or Nvidia that should pay for this mistake, not us.

Jorge Arroyo:

You missundertood what Roy said.

Hes talking about a cospiracy. Probably this is a microsoft conspirary against apple, using bad paids pychos for asuming mooltiple personalities, registering at apple with multiple login names and as many email addresses microsoft can give them. And you and me, in the real, we have no any or we havent any BSoD. I know this sounds very unbeliavable, but it makes sense if you understnd this: Colective Madness.

My gosh!!! Probably it affects only the first world and its spreading now and being really "global" thing, only in the uk and the usa. God bless im living in a third word country (mx)...

And my gosh! ther is a police looking for us all around, and now the have our serial numbers and will find us soon!

I begining to believe Roys history... at least, i give him the benefict of the doubt (just to be a good politician, right?).

Adding my story here. The whole thing can be found on my blog:
http://www.amymahon.com

*Bought Sept 2007*

*Late July and early Aug 2008*
• Screen occasionally freezes but normal again after forced reboot
• Occasionally have troubles waking display from sleep

*Aug 7, 2008*
• Black screen of death
• NVIDIA 8600GT showing as Intel GMA X3100 in system profile
• Take laptop to repair shop

*Aug 15, 2008*
• Get laptop back, new logic board
• Repair shop left a burned Apple diagnostics CD in the drive… yes!

*Sept 5, 2008*
• Screen goes funny colours again signifying bad graphics card
• Run Apple diagnostics CD, doesn’t find anything
• Take laptop to repair shop

*Sept 17, 2008*
• Get laptop back, new logic board

*Sept 20, 2008*
• Had trouble once waking laptop from sleep
• Take laptop to repair shop after I noticed iSight not working
• Repair shop says it’s not the connection and likely another major fix

So there you have it. The iSight is broken and I’ve been without a laptop for 20 days in the last 2 months due to faulty graphics cards and/or faulty logic boards, and although I asked for a replacement laptop, Apple won’t do so unless it's on its 4th failure, or some bull@#$% like that. So now it needs to go in for ANOTHER logic board replacement.

Very frustrated with the lack of customer service as well. They offered me £20 off an item from the Apple store as compensation -- what a freaking joke.

I just had a pretty good experience with a UK AppleStore, Regent Street.

My MBP died on Sunday night with all the symptoms of a failed nVidia card. This is doubly annoying as I am heading off to the USA for 2 weeks on Wednesday.

Problem is that I bought my 15" Santa Rosa MBP the week they came out at the beginning of June 2007 so it was more than 3 months out of warranty. When I got to the AppleStore the earliest Genius appointment was Thursday.

With little option I bought a new MacBook 2.4 and went to the office to swap the drives and RAM. I returned to Regent Street and used the "QuickDrop" and filled lots of details and mentioned this thread.

This morning I get a call from the store and I get myself ready for a fight only to be told that they would fix it for free rather than the normal £700+ as a one off as it is 'recently out of warranty'.

Truthfully I would have been prepared to pay something, maybe the cost of AppleCare (£279). However considering I can buy a MacBook for less than the repair which is now identical minus the unreliable video would have made the MBP a sad write-off.

I know a lot of people at Apple UK as I work for a partner so this could be special treatment but I hope this is not the case. Still I'm down £705 for the temporary MacBook but I'm sure one of my colleagues is not going to say no to a 2 week old MacBook when I get my MBP back.

I hope others have similar luck with Regent Street AppleStore.

I still think this is NOT a hardware problem

today it happened again
- sent the machine to sleep with power and then s
- wakeup by mouse click (cabled)
- no answer

BUT I am actually writing this on the machine dead just a while ago.

This time i went there more consciously
and i give you MY WAY OUT without long discussion
- let's say the machine is off all wires
(no mouse, no net, no screen, bare mbp)
- the machine is off
- power on and hold cmd-alt-p-r to zap the pram
- when the restart comes (with a louder startsound normally) hold t to go into target mode
(no need to connect a fire wire)
- wait a while, let go t, press power,
if it was in target mode the machine will power off immediatly
- power on - the screen is back

ok, discussion:

i dont say this is the so called DEAD NVIDIA,
i can not verify this
who can ???

what is dead nvidia really ?
what does apple say ?
is there somebody out there ?

BUT
it looks very much like it

AND
it is not a hardware problem

in the process to get out of it,
it is important to have the pram zapped and just coming from there
without another restart (that is very important)
to go into target mode.
If you do it another way, there is no light on the way.

Why is that?

Well, I wondered why the startup sound is loud for just one restart !!! ???
This looks to me like zapping the pram is not like before.
The settings come back with the nexxt restart.
That means
- they are saved in some place else,
which can not be zapped or nulled even by taking out the battery, resetting pmu, what you want
- just think of what that means...
- now in our case we have a problem with the sleep mode
the machine thinks it is waken in every place of the motherboard
but the graphic card didnt get the signal (or didnt get one - who knows)
- then the question is for us, the normal user
HOW TO WAKE A GRAPHIC CARD, IF THE SYSTEM DOES WANT TO ?

Well, these are just some considerations around the subject.

I am sure, this is only something like the truth,
like images on a screen thats aksing for interpretation...

But something stinks there down in the bios-like parts of mbp.
The sleep signal is not correctly handled throughout the machine.
The marvelous resurrection of pram values only is a part of this.

So, you firmware people, there is work for you.

AND
please tell here, if this has anything to do with what you are living
with youre machines - in the clear: is MY WAY OUT of any help for you?


bye
and good luck
mike

No way. The problem persists.

None of the "claimed" fixes work for me....still just a useless piece of tin to me.

Cheers Apple...nice one!

Didn´t work for me.

I switched from PC to this MBP.

I'm feeling so shame..

You can add me to the list.

I purchased a 17" Hi-Res back in June or July of last year.
My one year Apple Care is over.
I use the laptop only an hour or so a day with the occasional video editing/photo retouching.
I previously had zero problems and my computer always awoke from sleep.
Two days ago, I was done checking emails etc., so I closed all applications and closed the lid to put the machine to sleep.
One hour later, I wanted to check something on the internet and to my surprise I get greeted with a black screen.
I tried everything....Pram, button combinations, multiple reboots, deleting sleepimage files, target mode, power cables connected/disconnected, running on the battery till dead, etc.
The computer will take a DVD and spin it. There is the startup chime. Eject works.
When I close the lid the white LED doesn't pulsate in sleep mode it just stays on. When I lift the lid on ly a bit the LED dims.

Thank God I never sold my old G5 as I am posting from that computer now.

I called AppleCare (Netherlands) and they also made an exception since my MBP was only 3 weeks out of warranty. The agent did however explicitly say that this was because it is a few weeks out of warranty instead of Apple acknowledging the problem.

Unfortunately I'll have to wait a couple of weeks for the repair; I'm glad I hadn't sold my iMac G5 yet (I was about to).

Hey there monkeymilk!
Could you please tell me your name or the contact mail of regent store via email so i could refer to your experience about the free repair 3 months after warranty as i am in the same situation here in austria. I got a 17" glossy high res notebook which does not even make the dong at startup after having the same issue as here described. Please could you write me your name to mandalaweber@me.com so i can refer to your case? Thanks in advance!

So I went to the Apple Store today to see what I could do with my video less MBP. I told the "Genius" about how it still works perfectly fine through screen sharing and how it shows the x3100. None of this seemed to interest him. No matter what I told him about all the evidence for a faulty GPU, all he cared about was the small dent on the left front of the case. The dent was put there a month after the computer was purchased so I know it has nothing to do with it, but Mr. Genius insists this could be classified as level 4 accidental damage and nothing will be covered. He was also more interested in the fact that CompUSA didn't replace the serial on the top case.

It seems he didn't care at all about the actual problem. In fact, he turned the computer on then off right after, that's it...

So he said it'll be $300 for the logic board, but likely $1300 because of Mr. 12 Month Dent in the front. (CompUSA repaired it before when the dent was present no questions asked) Needless to say I was furious. I'm also confused as to why it would be so much more. Out of warranty work, is out of warranty work..is it not? Replace the board and be done. There is nothing wrong with the rest of the computer so why should I have to get a refurb?

I plan on calling customer relations, because I am highly dissatisfied with the service at the Genius Bar. Turn on, turn off? What a joke.

Why Apple act as they hate us?