Macbook Pro Black Screen (of death)

Question

Level 1

5 points

Macbook Pro Black Screen (of death)

I have a coworkers Macbook Pro who is getting the B(lack)SOD.

I recently replaced the LCD, and it works great. However, when I rebooted the machine, the pinweel thing was turning for quite some time, until finally just 'BLACK' (display on, visible when dark). I have tried the following:

-reseating & replacing RAM
-reset PRAM (cmd opt+PR, and removed battery and power to press the power button for 5 seconds. Also tried pressing the Shift-Control-Option-Power)
-fixed hard disk errors with DiskWarrior (it had to rebuild the directories)
-replaced the hard disk
-booting from DVD (worked only once with original hard drive, never with new hard drive)

Any ideas?

Powerbook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Mar 2, 2009 12:31 PM

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Answer 1

louie

Level 4

2,950 points

Mar 2, 2009 2:37 PM in response to Lyzdog

Do you mean that just the backlight is off, and the images are still visible on the display when viewed with a strong light, or from behind the lid Apple?

Is this a CCFL or LED backlight model? What prompted the display replacement? The backlight worked OK for how long?

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Answer 2

Lyzdog Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 2, 2009 2:51 PM in response to louie

No, the backlight is on - the LCD is 100% working. The problem is the computer boots up, and everything looks fine. Then, during the spinning wheel, the screen goes all black (but in a darkened room you can tell it is powered on).

I don't believe this is an LED model. The screen was replaced due to a crack in the previous LCD.

Thanks for your help!

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Answer 3

louie

Level 4

2,950 points

Mar 2, 2009 3:39 PM in response to Lyzdog

OK, beats me. Try an external display and see how both screens behave?

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Answer 4

Lyzdog Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 3, 2009 2:48 PM in response to louie

A couple things: The screen is fully-functional & bright, however, during boot-up I can see the wheel spinning below the apple sign.

A quick blue 'flash' and the screen goes black. The LCD is still on (and bright), but it isn't displaying anything but the color black.

Also, it will not boot to the DVD unless I press the 'option' button, in which case it allows me to select the DVD to boot from. However, it then does the blue 'flash' again, and goes back to the black screen.

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Answer 5

Nick M

Level 1

4 points

Mar 10, 2009 5:40 PM in response to Lyzdog

The exact same thing just happened to me a couple days ago after I did the apple software update. I just called apple support tonight and they said it was probably either the logic board or the hard drive. They estimated a minimum of $650 to a maximum of $1000+ to fix it. They only difference between our problems seems to be that I do not get he blue flash you get. I just goes straight from the grey screen with the spinning wheel to black. I am also unable to boot from the DVD.

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