[GUIDE] Fix iMac flickering and dark screen problems out of warranty

Thanks to all the contributors here.

I had the exact same problem, left side of screen dimming, not to mention grey smudges now appearing in the top right of the screen.

I couldn't bring myself to go the soldering route but packed self adhesive pads over the socket and it worked - so far. It does seem to be a half arsed fix, but it works.

There is no doubt that Apple should issue a recall for these displays.

Anyway, my display is bright all over and I didn't have to buy a new one.

Now, if I could just resolve the erratic magic mouse problems...

Hi

A friend of mine had this issue and saw this discussion. He heard about a company in Canterbury that will professionally repair this issue in a clean-room environment. He had to send his iMac to them from London but they repaired it and sent it back within a week, fully working. They are called The iT Store. They are on Facebook and advertise this service on eBay as well.

I'm guessing as their details are no longer on this forum Apple have removed them for advertising, but they should be glad that someone is willing to do a good job when this common issue appears.

My mate was happy to spend a fraction of the cost of a new LCD for a fully working iMac.

I'm sure Apple will take this comment down as well now, but at least some of you will know there is hope!! Sticking a piece of card down the side of the screen is not why we spend so much money on these Apple devices.

Veni, vidi, vici.

Thank you to everyone in this thread and to Kaos2K especially for starting it. I went through a long process of reading this and other related threads and planning out the attempted fix for many weeks. The issue was with a 27" 2011 iMac that I bought off of ebay. Everything else about the iMac was perfect except for this issue. From talking to the seller extensively I'm fairly certain that the issue was introduced during shipping. (Which makes perfect sense, more on that later.) I'm here to say that I went the route of the full soldering fix, and it worked!! But it is not for the feint of heart, and certainly not for those unfamiliar with soldering. You could potentially train up just for the purposes of the fix if you gave yourself enough time and are at least somewhat technically inclined.

First, a few responses to some of the posts over the last few pages.

cholechu wrote:

Anyway, I was extremely frustrated at the situation and wanted to find a different solution that would not involve buying a LCD panel (LM270WQ1) from eBay. So I started searching online for the faulty connector. ...

It's cool that you found that part, but I really don't think it's going to help you. I've seen this mentioned a few times in this thread: that you might be able to fix the problem by doing something to the white female piece and then putting it back in. An earlier poster even wrote:

The white plastic plug assembly actually has three parts. The female part is embedded in the mac and not removable but has two little plastic extensions holding the wire and 2 male parts of the plug/socket assembly in place. I prised the white plastic lugs to the side and the wire with plug attached came out easily.

See, there's already a misunderstanding in that description. There aren't three parts. The white part that people keep pulling out of their LCD, which is the same as the female connector in cholechu's links, isn't supposed to be able to come out of the LCD. It's supposed to be soldered directly to the board in the LCD and not budge. There's no "third female connector", there's just an open area where that thing is supposed to be sitting attached to the board. The fact that it can come out at all is the entire problem. That's why I don't think a replacement part is going to help. I realize that a few people mentioned that they "pushed it back in" and got it to work, and I guess there's no harm in trying, but I find it very unlikely that it will make solid, continuous electric contact just by being put back in. The contacts in question are extremely tiny, and the pressure required to sit on the board properly would have to be so exact that I wouldn't count on any fix except the soldering fix. And yes, I tried the "re-seat it approach" myself a few times, going through all the trouble to reconnect up the LCD each time only to find that all the lights still wouldn't stay on consistently.

The shocking thing is how commonly that entire piece has been breaking off for everyone. When I opened up my LCD for the first time to take a look, it just slid right out without any resistance whatsoever. It was obviously already completely severed from the board. Perhaps this was from the jostling during shipping, but still, it is obviously a poor solder connection that is not holding up to even the most minimal specs for robustness. It's just shoddy, shoddy work. It is downright criminal negligence that Apple is making people pay many hundreds of dollars for this if they are out of warranty. This should absolutely be turned into a class-action lawsuit, but I have no idea how to go about doing that.

Also just to see if anyone would bite I called three different local Mac fixi-it shops, and none of them would attempt to do this even after I talked them through the details and showed them this thread. I also visited the local Apple store and tried to convince them that they should fix it. The person was very nice and did several database searches to see if there was an authorized fix, but nope, not a recoginized problem. Grrrr. (And since I'm not the original owner it's a little hard for me to become indignant and demand a manager.)

So, on to the fix ...

Kaos2K basically spells it all out, but I'll throw in my observations. First, you need to know how to solder, and if you don't you need to buy a practice kit and practice practice practice. Start by watching both of these amazing youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NU2ruzyc4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NN7UGWYmBY

Also, you must have a proper temperature-controlled iron. No simple "plug directly into the wall" iron will suffice. You need to be able to maintain a perfect tempterature where the solder will stay nicely melted on the tip without burning. And yes, you need a very fine tip.

Second, you need to use the wire that Kaos2K recommends: 30 gauge wire wrap wire. This wire seems extremely tiny at first (Kaos's photos don't do justice to how small everything is), but relative to the contact sizes it is perfect. One person posted pictures of their fix using what seems like 22 guage wire, and I can't imaging how they got anything done in there with the wires taking up all the space. And to be honest, their "after" picture looked like some of the LEDs were still not on.

Third, at no time are you ever going to touch the solder to the iron directly at the contacts. The technique needs to be more like the second youtube video above that shows "surface mount" techniques. Like Kaos says, you'll be putting solder on the iron tip and then touching the tip to the contacts. I recommend using flux, but this too is tricky as you need to be able to clean the flux off, which isn't easy in there. Or use "no clean" flux.

Fourth, you need a very good mounted magnifying glass and light. There's just no chance of seeing properly in there without it. You need to get used to soldering with one eye closed while looking through the magnifier.

Finally, you need a lot of patience. I think the whole fix took me about five hours.

I'll post some pictures I took tomorrow, but I think that about sums it up. Oh, and if anyone in the Los Angeles area is interested in having this done, contact me and I would consider doing it. (For modest, fair fee for the time and effort required.)

I think I have mentioned this before on this forum, but I had this on my 2011 iMac 27in. I tried all the bodged fixes and it was never sorted.

I eventually found a company here in the UK (in Canterbury) called The iT Store who I sent my iMac to. They stripped down the iMac and resoldered the LCD. Since then I haven't had a problem at all with it, and there's no need to stuff card in any corners or try any wiring myself. It is as good as new and they gave a 6 month warranty anyway. It cost me £200 a few months ago, but I had an email from them last week with a new price of £150 if you ship or drop off yourself, or £200 and they pay for the courier to collect and return from a UK address. They are VAT registered, so I was able to put this through my business to bring the cost down further.

They also cleaned the iMac all out to reduce the chance of it happening again. It was collected and returned again within a week. Nice bunch as well, very friendly and helpful.

Google The iT Store in Canterbury. Very recommended, at a fraction of the cost of a new LCD!

I hope Apple don't remove this for advertising, I'm simply recommending as a happy customer!

Hi

The most tricky part is removing the metal bezel, particularly the corners (you´ll find notches on each corner that allow a small screwdriver to apply leverage).

After removing the metal bezel, you only have to unscrew a plastic bezel and be careful with the flat cables that hang from the top.

After that. you´ll have access to both LED strips, allowing you to re-solder the connector in place. I managed to do it with a good soldering tip (GOOT brand) and 0.5mm solder. I´m no soldering expert and I managed to solder it back pretty easily. Just follow regular soldering tips as warming up the piece in order to melt the solder to form a solid joint (plenty of videos on Youtube). Finally, I reinforced the connector with epoxi.

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Hello,

Great thanks to you, Kaos2K!

I repaired my iMac 27 2011 yesterday. It was very tricky, but the result is there :-)

I made some pictures of the process and posted them on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/katya1602/sets/72157631416502208/

(I used the localisation picture you made, because I forgot to take the picture).

Katya

Give them a shout.

Basically once my mate spoke to them he just boxed it up and shipped it to them, then had a call 3 days later telling him it was ready to collect, all working.

he used parcel2go to ship it. It was less than fifteen quid each way.

He had a go at fixing it himself but you need a clean room, PCB rework experience and equipment and a very careful hand!!

Thanks for the feedback. For anyone in the UK and even the EU to a lesser extent its worth reading the comments on the blog post because you probably have rights beacsue of the "Sale of Goods Act" that will allow you to get your iMac repaired by Apple for free even if your Apple warranty has expired.

Gerry

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Thanks for all the great information posted here! I was on the verge of buying a new screen, but decided to give self-repair a shot after looking through the instructions and pictures.

My experiences with this repair:

• I thought I was quite good at soldering, but this was really difficult!
• There are two similar connectors at each side of the screen. Eager as I was, I managed to take apart the wrong side one first, really surprised to find the connector strongly bonded. Fortunately, I took another look at the posted pictures before ripping out the good one.
• Lazy as I was, I simply cut off the black connector, stripped the original black cables a little bit, applied some solder on each of them and soldered the wires directly to the pads on the screen:

Notice that the rightmost pad down below is electrically connected to the more easily reachable pad on the upper right hand side (probably ground or Vcc). I used that to connect the corresponding wire and only had to cope with five more down below:

I know it looks pretty bad but I checked for any shorts before reconnecting the display - it was all evenly lit now, and (hopefully) no one will ever see my hack solder job...

Thanks to all the contributors! Peter

Well , that was an Interesting Experiance , all fixed !! , the prssure on the port took a while to get right , but now its fixed , thank you to everyone , really does speak to apple to not fix this , below are pictures Before And After

Before

After Fix

Once again Thanks to everyone !

Reyezuelo ---

Hola, you are lucky to be in Espagne!!! KAOS can definitely fix it, if it is possible to fixi it. He is a legend.

the fix is difficult ........... only because it uses very fine soldering.

please watch this video, where my 11 YEAR -OLD CHILD demonstrates the problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QJ4rqvn2G8&feature=youtu.be

It is absolutely amazing that Apple do not just fix this.

Quite simply: APPLE HAVE TO REPLACE ONE "MICRO-PLUG" on the LG display unit. It would cost 50 centimes for the plug, plus the skill of "micro-soldering"

Anyway -- thank goodness -- KAOS can fix these. It is incredible that in the whole world Kaos identified this problem properly.

It's very lucky that these days we have these forums. As I always say, thank you Kaos !!! Gracias

Look here for the photo of my finger that shows precisely the micro-plug in question:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/184413040

Again this 20 second video completely shows the whole probklem ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QJ4rqvn2G8&feature=youtu.be

it's that simple !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

a loose plug !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it is absolutely amazing Apple don't just fix this, as a publicity plus. It's unreal.

They are ruining their REPUTATION becaiuse of a loose "micro-plug" -- it's unreal. It has to be the stupidest move ever on the part of a big corporation.

Very nice thread.

I ve been to the Apple Store 3 hours ago with the same problem.

I recognized the same issue maybe 8 or 9 month ago. It started with a slight flickering and I thought the reason will be a driver problem. A few weeks ago it was getting worse. The left half was as dark as on the pictures before in this thread.

The one year warranty from Apple expired one year ago, but I hoped to get it repaired. I think it is so obvious that it is a failure in the production process.

The staff in Apple Store seemed to had the same view like me., but sadly not the Apple Care Service.

Here are so many people who have this problem, so I wonder why they don't accept or admit it as an own mistake. I am a little bit dissapointed.

Back to the topic itself. I pushed the lower left corner of the screen without the glass front panel. There was a remarkable change in the brightness, but more on the left side, than in the middle. Does anyone had the same problem? When I have more time, I will pull out the screen panel and try to push the connector itself, maybe the pressure from the front side was not enought.