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Late 2013 MacBook Pro 15” Weird screen issues

thevividyoshi

thevividyoshi

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 15, 2017
19
9
California
So I recently received a hand-me-down MacBook Pro, which came with the screen detached, the bottom cover missing, and no SSD. I have no information about what this laptop has been through, only that it is not under warranty or any kind.

When I first got the laptop, I screwed the screen back into the laptop, reattached the cables (not broken!), and turned it on. The beautiful 15” Retina display came to life, and I was able to boot into Internet Recovery. I grabbed a USB of Sierra and a 32GB SD card, and got to work setting up a makeshift boot drive on the card, until my SSD arrives. But as I was booting the USB up, the Apple logo, and everything else on the screen, inverted! I tried closing and reopening the laptop, but the screen would not go back to normal. I left it to install for about an hour (SD cards are slow), and when I came back, I noticed that the middle was fading to a lighter color, while the corners were turning back to normal. After using it for a couple hours, the middle slowly faded back to the normal colors, and although there was some ghosting for a time after, it went away after around 6 or so hours, and the display was perfectly fine.

...that is, until now. I’ve had the laptop on for about 5 hours straight, and suddenly the display went inverted again! As I’ve been typing this, the display is doing the same thing it did yesterday, slowly fading around the edges.

EFCC664B-9D72-4974-91F4-6E1C3F7FB063.jpeg


I suspect it might be a problem with the LCD itself, as an external monitor on HDMI works just fine. Anyone else experience this, or have a remedy? The display is starting to come back now, and this is the only issue with the computer; it’s lining up to replace my 2016 Dell laptop!
 
vemac575 said:
They aren't too expensive on ebay.
Click to expand...
I understand that I can buy a new one, I'd just like to avoid that for as long as I can, as they certainly aren't cheap

mightyjabba said:
I have actually experienced something similar to this with an old PowerBook G3 that had been dropped. I was able to partially solve it by using a program that inverts the screen colors (thereby making them "normal" again). Have you tried using the invert screen option under the Accessibility preferences?

Click to expand...
I do use the invert colors feature initially, as it turns the colors on the screen to almost normal (they're still very faded), but after a while, the screen fades to a point where the inverted colors become... well, inverted again.

To fix this latest episode of the fading, I left my Mac on, with the screen on, just sitting at a black screen all night. When I came back this morning, there was no fading, no inverted colors, nothing. The only thing that was happening was the contrast of the screen changing a little randomly, but I've had that happen on a lot of laptops, and I believe it's related to what's on screen.

I do feel like this isn't a permanent solution, and it will kick back up again, but I'm wondering if this is potentially heat related. I've had a failure of a smartphone's digitizer that seemed to only manifest itself if the device is in use for a long time, so I wonder if maybe something very similar is going on here.
 
thevividyoshi said:
I understand that I can buy a new one, I'd just like to avoid that for as long as I can, as they certainly aren't cheap


I do use the invert colors feature initially, as it turns the colors on the screen to almost normal (they're still very faded), but after a while, the screen fades to a point where the inverted colors become... well, inverted again.

To fix this latest episode of the fading, I left my Mac on, with the screen on, just sitting at a black screen all night. When I came back this morning, there was no fading, no inverted colors, nothing. The only thing that was happening was the contrast of the screen changing a little randomly, but I've had that happen on a lot of laptops, and I believe it's related to what's on screen.

I do feel like this isn't a permanent solution, and it will kick back up again, but I'm wondering if this is potentially heat related. I've had a failure of a smartphone's digitizer that seemed to only manifest itself if the device is in use for a long time, so I wonder if maybe something very similar is going on here.
Click to expand...

Unless you're under warranty, sadly that is probably what you're going to have to do. I was just offering that info. Best of luck.
 
So, after the last time the screen faded, just leaving it overnight corrected most of the issue. I did see what appears to have been the backlight on the screen giving out, so I will inevitably need to replace it, but so far, all appears to be fine, and I've been using it just fine for the past 12 hours. Can't wait to get the SSD in, and have this laptop be ready for full use!
 
I love it when an old machine is resurrected like this! Hope you get to enjoy it for a long time!
 
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