Please Help: Laptop Black Screen on Boot, HDMI Not Working

Hi pikador,

if your NVIDIA card is not displayed like this:

That would be reason for concern. Try to use gfxcardstatus https://gfx.io/ to see if you can select your NVIDIA card. If you cant select your NVIDIA card use gfx to force the machine to always use the integrated graphics any graphic switching that could cause glitching would then be avoided. This could be a temporary fix.

Try to reinstall your (old) operating system and see if the machine recognizes the NVIDIA card again.

GPU's and CPU's are soldered onto the motherboard (logic board) and can not be individually replaced. The whole logic board would be replaced for a price that can get you a new laptop (albeit it not be a 15" MBP)

Hope this helps!

Hey,

Is it only 1 tv that the HDMI out is no longer working for or does it fail to output to any screen? Can you still output to screens via thunderbolt? The issue with the volume should be solvable with an SMC reset but given that you have already tried that and it didn't work there may be an underlying problem.

Have you tried to reinstall your operating system using mac osx recovery instead of a USB? How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support.

You could also post an entrecheck report here to see if someone can get a clue out of that https://etrecheck.com/

Following the steps of the How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support you have the option of deleting your personal data. If you don't want this just select reinstall operating system and carry on from there. All your files will not be removed.

Back up your data regardless because it is good practise indeed 😉.

I have the exact same problem. Except my MBP sometimes won't even come back to the regular screen after closing and opening the lid. Also, neither the HDMI output nor the mini-display (thunderbolt) outputs are working with external displays. Can someone help?

HI,

Thanks for your advice! You know, I just went to the System Report and noticed that my NVIDIA card is not even showing up under Graphics/Displays, only the integrated chip shows (Intel HD Graphics 4000). This is a 2012 Retina MBP that came with a nice (for that time) NVIDIA card with dedicated VRAM.

So, based on the above, I am concluding that a) my NVIDIA card went kaput, and this is why I am experiencing boot to black screen issues and can't connect to external displays, or b) the drivers for the card somehow got corrupted. I did install Sierra after this issue first occurred and I am guessing my MBP is not detecting the NVIDIA hardware. Which is too bad because this is still a very nice, fast laptop with SSD and 16 GB of RAM that I am using for fairly resource intensive tasks.

Is there a way to have the NVIDIA card/chip replaced? Or does that involve replacing the whole logic board and is very expensive?

Thanks!

Thanks, GhonaZ!

No, I don't see my discrete NVIDIA card in either System Report or gfxcardstatus. I will try to re-install the OS. Can I do that without having to move all my files and erasing the startup disk? I do realize that backing up is always a good practice but still.