07-10-2011, 10:11 PM

I have a black Macbook I purchased back in 2008. A few weeks ago the screen would keep going black, but I could tell that the screen was still barely showing. I took it in to get worked on at a local repair shop and they told me I needed a new cable, motherboard, and hard drive (yeah.. long story). Brought it home and it is the same as it was when I brought it in. It is extremely difficult to bring the screen up if it goes into sleep mode. I have no idea what it is. Any help?

07-10-2011, 10:32 PM

Originally Posted by slowens890

I have a black Macbook I purchased back in 2008. A few weeks ago the screen would keep going black, but I could tell that the screen was still barely showing. I took it in to get worked on at a local repair shop and they told me I needed a new cable, motherboard, and hard drive (yeah.. long story). Brought it home and it is the same as it was when I brought it in. It is extremely difficult to bring the screen up if it goes into sleep mode. I have no idea what it is. Any help?

They charged you to replace all that and it STILL isn't working? Take it back. At the least they owe you a refund.

07-10-2011, 11:34 PM

It's really complicated. They were really shady and still have my data they are transferring. So we will bring it up when we take it in, but still. Can't figure out what the problem is after replacing everything!

07-11-2011, 12:06 AM

Originally Posted by slowens890

It's really complicated. They were really shady and still have my data they are transferring. So we will bring it up when we take it in, but still. Can't figure out what the problem is after replacing everything!

Unless you simply dropped the brightness down by mistake, then perhaps the backlight has gone bad.

EDIT: Just to throw in more opinion on this… there is no chance that the hard drive could have caused this; highly unlikely it was the motherboard (really, I think no chance at all), and the cable too… highly unlikely.

07-11-2011, 12:38 AM

No I have to drop the brightness all the way down and back up again just to get the screen to come UP when it goes black! Haha.

The hard drive had to be replaced because the motherboard was messed up which apparently caused the hard drive to get messed up. The cable where the inverter is was replaced because that was what they thought the initial problem was, but then they told me the mother board. I have been reading that a lot of people are having these problems with MacBooks, but not really finding out the answer. I originally thought it was the backlight, but they told me that wouldn't be it.. but they are also idiots who jacked up my computer so..

07-11-2011, 10:58 AM

Originally Posted by slowens890

No I have to drop the brightness all the way down and back up again just to get the screen to come UP when it goes black! Haha.

The hard drive had to be replaced because the motherboard was messed up which apparently caused the hard drive to get messed up. The cable where the inverter is was replaced because that was what they thought the initial problem was, but then they told me the mother board. I have been reading that a lot of people are having these problems with MacBooks, but not really finding out the answer. I originally thought it was the backlight, but they told me that wouldn't be it.. but they are also idiots who jacked up my computer so..

I am highly skeptical that anything could go wrong with a motherboard that could cause a hard drive to go bad also. You are in a tough spot here. I have no doubt that these guys scammed you, and getting a refund isn't going to come easily, or voluntarily. You'd likely have to sue them for it, which won't be simple, and you'd have to avoid working on the MacBook further since it'd now be evidence, or get expert testimony that the problem had nothing to do with what they did. In any event, I certainly wouldn't trust them any further on this.

10-13-2012, 06:06 PM

Okay now its 2012 and this thread still seemed to have no solution but here is my fix.

Having tried resetting the SMC as suggested, and then dismantled the computer I found the LCD was still fully functional but the back light was off, there was no flickering on opening and shutting the screen and I checked the leads were intact, then by accident while reconnecting the leads I found it would sometimes work on minimum brightness if switched on multiple times but would go back if the illumination was increased. I presumed it was the inverter malfunctioning but so many people have had no success with replacing that on this forum, I doubted it was the answer. Then this morning laterally thinking about some people wondering about the firmware update, on a parallel thread in macrumours I did something irrational.

I rebooted on an older snow leopard system on an external while the screen was functional enough to do so and voila full brightness! Then I rebooted on another newer backup OS voila! Finally back to the internal 10.6.8 and voila!

So here I am with a bright display which is good for sleep and wake - the machine is still half dissembled but now finally seems stable.

Since this did seem to fix it what does this actually mean about this recurring problem for many users? How does rebooting of another OS fix this fault so it seems to be fixed on the original OS?

10-13-2012, 10:42 PM

This is dhushara again because the forum wouldn't recognise my password or the ones it sent on reset.

Having previously had almost complete blackout anywhere over the lowest brightness setting requiring endless twiddling the brightness to zero and back to get even that, after switching OS's back and forth I had a clean run for an hour at full brightness, then back to blackout, so I went back over anything I might have missed and tried a PRAM reset (power on with opt command P and R pressed) holding it for long enough to get a complete reset with chime and new screen. Suddenly back to full brightness which is stable to sleep and restart. This might explain the strange OS shift behavior above. This has now been running fine and bright for three hours. If this holds I'll say no more!

11-09-2012, 02:48 AM

hey guys I have same problem here I believe. trying to fix my fan and all of a sudden my macbook has this black screen that stays tinted even though i can barely see icons. I have no idea what to do. should i re-install operating system? and clear hard drive? what should i do?

11-09-2012, 02:50 AM

also.... my computer keeps going to sleep every 4 seconds very important detail