MacBook Air 2013 Black Screen of Death

[star-affinity]

A way to consistantly reproduce the problem

WARNING: this will most likely cause your MacBook Air (Mid 2013) to hang, requiring a forced restart. Not that it should be a problem, but any non-saved work will be gone.

1. Have the MacBook Air (Mid 2013) running with the display/lid open.

2. Hold down the ”cmd alt/option” keys and press the powerkey (this will cause the MacBook Air to enter sleep mode)…

3. …then immediately after pressing the above keycombo, press random keys on the keyboard in an attempt to wake up the computer.

After the first or a few tries you should have a hanged MacBook Air, i.e. black screen and not responding to keyboard input. Hold down the power key for several seconds to force shut down, then press it again to startup.

The above steps if of course not something you'd normally do, but it's just a way of triggering the (most likely) same problem people experience under more normal usage circumstances.

The issue has been reported to Apple. Hopefully a future Firmware update will solve it.

 

[polee]

Yup it happened to me yesterday. I was working on a document when the screen turned black. Pressed the space button but nothing. Presed a few other keys ... nothing. Finally held the power button for a few seconds and the computer came back to life.

 

[star-affinity]

Yup it happened to me yesterday. I was working on a document when the svreen turned black. Pressed the space button but nothing. Presed a few other keys ... nothing. Finally held the power button for a few seconds and the computer came back to life.

So you didn't have to restart it? Or is this what you mean you did when you say ”…held down the power button for a few seconds…”?

 

[polee]

So you didn't have to restart it? Or is this what you mean you did when you say ”…held down the power button for a few seconds…”?

By holding down the power button, I may have reset the computer.

 

[Johnny McCash]

I've run into the same problem a handful of times with my 2013 MBA I've had since September, same as described above screen appears to go to sleep then I'm left with the backlight on the keyboard with the logo illuminated on the back of the display. I noticed something else though which I'm not sure if its related but it seems to be a similar issue. If I wait for the display to sleep or by selecting sleep from the menu and then attempt to wake it quickly within about a second or so it will crash, sometimes with a backlight on the keyboard but other times without and it won't come back on until I hold the power button in as described above.

Do you think this is related? Can anyone else reproduce it?

I've accidentally done this four times, and it's easy to reproduce: Wait for the display to dim (the "I'm gonna sleep in a second if you don't caress me" warning), then for the display to go black (the "now I'm gonna sleep" warning), then quickly run your fingers over the touchpad in an attempt to tell it not to sleep just now. It should make the computer completely unresponsive and impossible to wake. I have to force reboot it to get it back to normal. Can't remember if the screen backlight is on (the illuminated Apple logo), and I'm not gonna test it just now

 

[star-affinity]

By holding down the power button, I may have reset the computer.

Yes, probably.

I've accidentally done this four times, and it's easy to reproduce: Wait for the display to dim (the "I'm gonna sleep in a second if you don't caress me" warning), then for the display to go black (the "now I'm gonna sleep" warning), then quickly run your fingers over the touchpad in an attempt to tell it not to sleep just now. It should make the computer completely unresponsive and impossible to wake. I have to force reboot it to get it back to normal. Can't remember if the screen backlight is on (the illuminated Apple logo), and I'm not gonna test it just now

I guess my way above would work too then…
Anyway, this is really quite sad on such a fine computer. I hope Apple can fix it with a firmware update as soon as possible.

 

[Sure, Not]

Yes, I have this problem. I see this thread is a few months old. Apple better address this.

 

[technophobe*]

Random MacAir black screen

It's a pain - Open with Word and Safari and it dies with keyboard alight (battery power). Plugged in, and reboot to restart and full power. First time it looked like the screen light had been reduced to zero but it's happened again for no reason.

Apple and Word are rarely best buddies, but this seems deeper than that.

This time it opened with PowerPoint when trying to reply to the thread.

This laptop is a backup to the all-day desktop, 2 months old and used very little but simply not efficient when working from home!

Fix it, Apple! ... and while you are at it, give me some room to access the 'submit reply' on my screen above the bar of icons docked at the bottom. Or at least a visible (and usable) slider down the side so I can grab it.

 

[okboy]

I heard there was a voluntary recall. Just looking for confirmation now before I finally take it in to Apple.

It's happening once or twice a week and I just lost work in Illustrator.

 

[bwat47]

WARNING: this will most likely cause your MacBook Air (Mid 2013) to hang, requiring a forced restart. Not that it should be a problem, but any non-saved work will be gone.

1. Have the MacBook Air (Mid 2013) running with the display/lid open.

2. Hold down the ”cmd alt/option” keys and press the powerkey (this will cause the MacBook Air to enter sleep mode)…

3. …then immediately after pressing the above keycombo, press random keys on the keyboard in an attempt to wake up the computer.

After the first or a few tries you should have a hanged MacBook Air, i.e. black screen and not responding to keyboard input. Hold down the power key for several seconds to force shut down, then press it again to startup.

The above steps if of course not something you'd normally do, but it's just a way of triggering the (most likely) same problem people experience under more normal usage circumstances.

The issue has been reported to Apple. Hopefully a future Firmware update will solve it.

I can longer reproduce this here after the 10.9.2 update. Prior to 10.9.2 could reproduce this 100% of the time Haven't seen a black screen since.

 

[star-affinity]

I can longer reproduce this here after the 10.9.2 update. Prior to 10.9.2 could reproduce this 100% of the time Haven't seen a black screen since.

Yes, it's really good the 10.9.2 update fixed that.
The thing is I hear some people are still having problems with the screen not coming back on under other circumstances.

 

[n711pp]

Mac book air Black Screen with cursor Apple fix

Restart the machine into Single-User by holding “cmd S”

Type the following commands:

mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.applesetupdone
reboot

The computer will restart to a language selection screen, it will proceed to a blackscreen once again, do a hard restart

Once the computer comes back up, it will proceed through the startup process like normal this time, skip anything that you can and when the account creation screen comes up, create a test account

Once the account is created simply log out of the test account and into the main account.

You can now remove the test account from users and group preferences.

Issue is resolved at this point.

 

[waywardmuse]

same happens to '08 iMac w/ Mavericks upgrade

Hi,

This same thing has been happening to my desktop ever since I upgraded to Mavericks. The apps I was working with disappear and I get a nonresponsive dim black screen. The only way I can get it to go away is rebooting. Computer knows there's a problem because I get the error message that it was shut down incorrectly. So I wonder if it's a Mavericks thing? I found this thread via google search. Thanks in advance for any help.

J

 

[gershie]

It happened again, even after installing updates. It seems like people have slightly different problems on this thread. This happens when the machine has gone in to hibernate while left unused (so screen is up and not closed), and then when trying to wake it up nothing happens. Not even the cursor is shown and have to long press the start button to restart.

I'm having the exact same problem on my macbook air. When the battery gets down lower than about 50%, it will hibernate and not wake up unless booted up. Not sure what to do. I'm going to do a backup, then try installing updates. If nothing works, may take it to the Apple store before it gets worse. Has only started happening this week.