I seem to have pressed some kind of deadly key combination that has completely disabled my display's backlight. The screen is barely readable and none of the normal brightness buttons or sliders are having any effect.
i am having the exact same problem. screen goes black when i adjust the screen, like the computer is asleep. Also sometimes when i go to hand the machine to someone or pick it up to turn it so someone can see the screen. It goes Black!
guess i will be taking a trip to the apple store. (sigh......)
Alright, after a bit of research, it seems that inverter board failure is indeed the problem, and that it is a pretty common issue in laptops. Based on the erratic nature of the failure and others' experience with the same problem on other computers, my guess is that a cable is slightly loose. This may be due to the design of the MacBook's casing, or simply the result of a few lazy manufacturing jobs. Then again, it could easily be a more complicated failure than that.
They asked me to reset power management
1. Take out battery and power cable
2. Hold down power button, 5secs
3. Put the battery and power back, power up.
Then reset PRAM
1. Shut down
2. Start holding P,R,apple,alt
3. Wait for 2 chimes, let go of all keys.
i bought a macbook pro in march to find that two of the keys on the keypad were loose and fell off.....after getting a replacement now my backlight has died and i cant get it back on !! mabey if i get another replacement it will be third time lucky !!!
Now I'm starting to wonder if the seemingly-more widespread random turn-off issue is actually this issue in disguise.
From AppleDefects.com:
* Reports of random and inappropriate shut downs, in the midst of doing typical computer tasks. No cause has been determined.
* After the random shut down, the MacBook frequently has trouble turning back on, and sometimes will repeat the random turn offs frequent enough to render the MacBook completely unusable (turning off every few minutes, for example)
* There are many reports on Apple's Discussion Boards and the MacWeb of the issue, as user frustration gathers momentum.
The fact that it is very difficult to see the non-lit screen coupled with the fact that it purportedly takes many presses of the power button to turn back on make me suspect if the users reporting random shutoffs are simply experiencing inverter-board failures and mistaking the black screen for a shutdown. Then again, music or an external display would give it away, so I'm not sure.
Here's some further news: there is an easier way to turn the backlight back on than putting the MacBook to sleep -- changing the resolution. Keybinding a res change could be the best tempo-fix there is.
One of my clients got a new MacBook last week (8/14/06). Came in with failed backlighting. Long phone conversation (8/15/06) not only was not followed up by Apple support, but 3 days later (8/19) they had no record of the conversation. As of Monday (8/21/06) still no information on getting a replacement laptop. This is an example of horrible product support of a product that seems to have a fundamental failure in one of the subsystems. They have given me one very unhappy customer. I expect better support than this for the premium price of these systems.
Has anyone gotten a decent answer from Apple about this situation.
I took my Macbook to the Apple store for a darkened screen. It happened all of a sudden. The only warning I had was that occasionally, after waking from sleep, the screen brightness would go dimmer and I would have to readjust the brightness. This happened quite a bit--maybe 15 times since I got the machine. So this time, I could see a very dim outline of the desktop although the screen was nearly black. I went into system preferences and tried to adjust the brightness to no avail. I took it in, and the tech shipped it off to Apple for repair. He thinks it's a failed backlight.
After replacing the logic board on a MacBook, I discovered the backlight out. After trying to reset the PRAM and PMU (or SMC) with no result I ordered a new LCD and replaced it and that did the trick.
Well, kind of the same?
Couple of weeks after the purchase (it was in august..), when I left the USA I mentioned that my display is blinking. While at normal work one of a sudden it starts blinking like some old display (spontaneously dims or brightens the display half of the regular stop with quite fast frequency). Well, I found the way to stop this blinking- just turning the brightness full way down and then back up; and after some time it just stopped blinking at all.
Recently the craziest thing started to happen: the display stays dimmed for around 2 minutes or so after waking up or after being turned on(this time varies every time from 30 seconds up to 5 minutes, well, not every time, but 4 out of 5 at least) - It's just like on the lowest level of brightness (you know you can see just a bit, when the brightness is turned all the way down). When I press the F2 or F1 buttons (brightness up or down) -there's no reaction , but I can see that It's working -I see the normal gray brightness increasing/decreasing box on the desktop - so there's no actual reaction, the screen remains dimmed on the lowest level of brightness. I think that it helps to log out or to restart or to do one of than for couple of times- it looks like it's more likely to get back to normal when logging in, when choosing from the list of users. Most of times if the laptop is plugged in and I just put it to sleep or shut it down and turn it back on in 5 minutes it works fine - just like it should. But if it's not plugged in and was shut down or sleeping for some time, the problem is right there! I suppose that what it needs to turn the brightness back on - is activity, it should be busy working on something, like turning the widgets on or starting up the aperture (it does help sometimes). I think that it might help to reinstall the Mac OS, because the Apple Hardware test didn't show any malfunctions. But that would be too much work, with copying all the data, and I don't know if it will help or not. What can you advise? Or is it the same well-know invertor problem?
Thought I'd add my Macbook to the list...sadly...Exact same symptoms as Thames describes. Backlight dies intermitantly....seems to be linked to the sleep mode in some way but I don't see a pattern. I'll contact Apple but am a little concerned that no one appears to have received a resolution on this issue.
I've had my black macbook approx. 6 months when the back light would occasionally flick into dim mode whilst sat on the desktop (whilst I worked on other machines). To begin with, I would solve this small issue by dropping the brightness right down and then back up using F1 and F2.
This solved the issue for a couple of weeks - however, the screen started to flicker and the situation got worse ... much worse. This week the screen completed died in that the same problem happened, yet when I tried to use F2 to get the back light on, nothing would happen ... ! It was stuck in dim.
If you look very closely (at the dim screen) you can see the brightness controls on the desktop. The back light
tries to start and then gives up (you get about a second of back light).
I have seen in other peoples posts that this issue was also linked with putting the laptop in sleep mode. I would agree that I have had issues with the screen staying in 'dim-mode' when coming out of sleep. Since my own problem surfaced, I had been shutting down the mac and powering it up properly (and refraining from using sleep).
As you can imagine all of this was very frustrating ... !
A couple of friends (also with Macbook's) suggested re-installing the machine (via a mini DVI cable) - which they thought might solve the situation and guess what ... IT HAS!
The screen has already been flickering again slightly, but the back light issue (for now) has stopped ... so far I have been running the fresh install for 12 hours without any problems - I have installed all the software updates and everything (for now) seems fine ...
... although I do hold my breath and think this is only a temporary fix.
I'm not sure if others have tried this or had any success, but I thought I'd share my experiences in a hope to get this annoying problem solved.
