2011 27'' iMac screen won't work

Ok so the title is a little vague. Let me give some more background.

My 2011 27'' iMac's hard drive was crapping out, so I replaced it, but it was still a little slow so I opted to get a Seagate SSHD. Upon attempting to install the SSHD I managed to do what appears to have been cracking of the monitor's power cable (ribbon) where it plugs into the logic board, whoops. So the display wouldn't work at all when booting up. I tried my best to fix this, pushing pins where I could see them back into place etc but to no avail.

I went out and bought a 24'' Acer monitor and tried to hook up an external display via VGA to MiniDisplay port (into the thunderbolt port). All I saw was either the flat grey screen or the flat grey patch screen. I was able to see my mouse however and it disappeared off to the left of the screen. Upon further reading online, I discovered that I was perhaps in 'extended desktop mode' and simply couldn't see the login screen. I have no idea how to fix this because I can't adjust settings since I'm at the login screen.

I tried tinkering with the cables some more to see if I could get the display to work and upon doing so, I neglected to insert screws into the screen so it fell forward and literally ripped the vertical sync cable out of it's fitting, bent the pins on the other cable that connects the LCD to the logic board and the ribbon cable.

I thought I was screwed (no pun intended) so I figured I would bring the damaged LCD iMac to another iMac and try target display mode on a working one.

Same thing happened where I only saw the extended desktop on the working iMac's screen or what I think is.

Interestingly enough, I hit command F1 (or F2, can't remember) on the damaged iMac and the screen mirrored the good one! So I guess that means the LCD does work, but for some reason its not working when I try to boot up the computer on it's own. Anyone have any ideas as to why that is?

The second question I guess is how the heck do get this thing out of extended mode if I can't access the settings on the damaged computer to do so?

I also tried booting into disk utility via the time machine (holding down option) in an effort to restore the last back up to the brand new BLANK drive I put in, but couldn't because again, only saw a blank grey screen.

So, I put the original (working) drive back in that has OSX on it hoping that I could figure out how to put everything "back to normal"

Now I don't know if the hard drive is damaged or if this is a display issue or what...

I'm in a real pickle...

qwik3r said:

.
I also tried booting from time machine in an effort to restore the last back up to the brand new BLANK drive I put in, but couldn't because again, only saw a blank grey screen.

Click to expand...

I "assume" you mean you tried booting to an external drive that had your Time Machine backup on it?

Can't do that since a TM backup is not bootable.

So I put the original drive back in that is working fine.

Now I don't know if the hard drive is damaged or if this is a display issue or what...

Click to expand...

What do you mean it "is working fine? You can boot to the original drive and the screen works and everything runs as it is supposed to?

Where in all of that stuff did you install OS X or any operating system onto the new drive or attempt booting up from a USB key, DVD drive or something that has a bootable installer of OS X?

You can't just restore the last TM backup to a new drive.
You have to format and install OS X onto the drive and then restore the backup.

Hi there,

Thanks for your reply. To answer your questions the drive that was in the computer has OSX on it and 'is working fine' but after the whole ordeal with the wires ripping out and the display issues it won't start up using that drive.

I know that I have to format a brand new drive via disk utility, but I haven't even gotten to that step because I can't see the screen sadly.

I'm aware that I also cannot boot into time machine, so I mean't that I tried booting to the utility menu by "feel" since I can't see the options to chose when holding the 'option' key.

Like I said, for some odd reason, I am able to use target display mode and mirroring on the non-functioning iMac from a healthy one, which leads me to believe that the display is obviously working in some capacity.

I'm unsure if I some how damaged the working hard drive so the point of it not booting up or something.

Furthermore, once the damaged iMac boots up, I see the mouse on the grey screen (when it was in TDM and also when I hooked it up to the external monitor) but nothing else. The mouse seems to go off to the far right and disappear, which again leads me to believe that I'm seeing an extended desktop.

What i don't understand is why this same behavior occurred when I put the blank hard drive in. One would think the settings are different and there is NOTHING on the hard drive, so why wouldn't it show in the correct aspect ratio?

In any event, something occurred from the point of removing the good hard drive in an attempt to put in the Seagate SSHD and to where I am now, not quite understanding what exactly is damaged.

I'm trying to restore a time machine back up to my internal drive of a iMac with a busted screen. I managed to boot from a bootable back up and format the internal drive but I can't actually see the utilities menu when I boot (command + r) in order to restore the time machine back up to it. For some reason the external monitor that is connected to the iMac won't turn on until my login screen basically.

Is there another option for me to restore the time machine back up, such as doing so while logged in, since I have access to the OS through an old back up?

OR I have a Yosemite installer that is brand new on a USB thumb drive, but the latest back up is from Mavericks. Possible to install from clean from Yosemite and restore the Mavericks back up or will that not even work properly?

Let's keep this thread all together as one not two. Merged.

Just maybe, if your iMac qualifies, you could possibly get it fixed under Apple's iMac (27-inch): AMD Radeon 6970M Video Card Replacement Program? A bit of a stretch, but one never knows….
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT203787

pm-r said:

Just maybe, if your iMac qualifies, you could possibly get it fixed under Apple's iMac (27-inch): AMD Radeon 6970M Video Card Replacement Program? A bit of a stretch, but one never knows….
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT203787

Click to expand...

That could be the issue since you are getting the LCD to work in TDM but not on it's own - worth a shot.

the main issue is if you ripped the cable in any way on that model or damaged the connector on the main board and the lcd together you just killed a mac there is no fix except replacement

I wonder if Apple will Tom as the OP cracked it and replaced the hard drive. Very much against the owner maintenance in iMacs. Be interesting to see what they say gwik3r.

As I mentioned previously — "Just maybe...", or maybe just tell them that MacKeeper did the damage when it was run. Almost equivalent the amount of damage it can do.