17" Display is black

[carlosvk]

Hi,

I have a Mac Book Pro 17" and today I turned it on and the screen is not showing anything, is just plain black. I know the machine is working cause I can play music with my shortcuts on the keyboard and seems to be working ok except that the screens is black. I pluged and external DVI screen and there is no signal. Called a few shops and some say might be the graphics card, aparently quite expensive. Anybody experienced something like this in the past?

MacBook Pro 17" 2.5 GHz Inch Core 2 Duo
Super Drive DVD and CD Write -R -RDL -RW +R +RW +RDL Bluetooth, Airport, USB 2, Firewire 400 and 800 and all that stuff.
150GB HD, 1.5 Gigabit
4GB RAM (2GB Originally)

Thanks,

Carlos Villarreal Kwasek

 

[xstep]

I've had this a couple of times on my 15". Sometimes hitting the brightness key fixes it. Other times I close the lid to let it sleep. Once the glowing light comes on I open the lid again and it is fixed.

 

[brianwmay]

Not being funny but have you pressed the F2 key in case it's gone to full dark - I leave my machine like this overnight?

 

[xstep]

Whoa! I just went through a time vortex.

I saw brianwmay's message, typed out mine, clicked the post button and was told I had to wait 30 seconds because I'm not allowed to post twice within that limit. I come back to repost and it tells me I'm posting a duplicate, which I find is in front of brianwmay's.

 

[rkulpajr]

Might be covered under extended warranty

Same thing happened to me last week. Had to take it to an apple store and they replaced it under applecare. You may want to check because apple extended the warranty on certain NVDIA cards.

This is taken from the following website: MacBook Pro: Distorted video or no video issues

"However, after an Apple-led investigation, Apple has determined that some MacBook Pro computers with the NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics processor may be affected. If the NVIDIA graphics processor in your MacBook Pro has failed, or fails within three years of the original date of purchase, a repair will be done free of charge, even if your MacBook Pro is out of warranty."

Hope this helps...