Macbook Pro screen dead - possible causes?

[marclondon]

My son, who has just flown in from abroad, has just presented me with
his 2009 13 inch Macbook Pro 2.26 GHz model with a blank screen - he
says it worked fine yesterday but on the plane he turned it on and
nothing on the screen.

I've got it hooked up to an external monitor and it works fine on that.
So what's the likely problem? Sadly no Apple Care on this but I'll be
annoyed if this is a major cost on a relatively young machine.

If it's driving the external screen OK I presume it's not the video/graphics card (9400M) and I don't think it's the backlight gone as I can't make out anything faint on the screen. I guess the worst case is something on the logic board that connects to the screen...

 

[reclusive46]

It could really be anything. Realistically your going to need to take it to a genius bar.

 

[marclondon]

It could really be anything.

I know - my first thought was a butterfly flapped its wings in the Amazon. But I was hoping someone could narrow it down a bit...

 

[Heavertron]

I know - my first thought was a butterfly flapped its wings in the Amazon. But I was hoping someone could narrow it down a bit...

Can you see even a very feint image on the screen (backlight failed) or no image at all?

 

[marclondon]

Can you see even a very feint image on the screen (backlight failed) or no image at all?

No - nothing, as I said above. I'm running it now on an external monitor and the display preferences show only the external display and not the Pro's LCD.

 

[marclondon]

OK - I've fixed it. Got impatient and took the back off, blew out a lot of dust (and it was a lot), and gently pushed on the main LCD ribbon connector (which is not very robust in my opinion). So could have been unseated in transit or maybe dust build up as well. Anyway, the LCD now works.