Rev A MBP - Kernel Panics led to Display (backlight?) problem/boot problem

[Bradbitz11]

Hello all,

I have a Revision A Macbook Pro (1.83 GHz) that, admittedly, has been through a lot. It's on it's third display, this one has been in the machine since 2007 (original and first replacement were cracked due to negligence).

Since that time, it has performed as flawlessly as a nearly 4 year old machine can. However, last Monday I flew back from my parent's house to my apartment in Green Bay (carry on), and upon arrival, I booted the machine - the startup chime stuttered, and the display flashed. I hard reset the machine by holding down the power button, and had the same thing happen.

So I started again, resetting the PRAM, and also resetting the SMC. Finally, I got it to boot, then started experiencing several kernel panics and screen flickering. I left it on overnight (as I use Awaken as an alarm clock), and when it didn't go off in the morning, I looked to find a Kernel Panic screen over my screen saver.

I then left it off most of the week, doing my internet browsing while at home on my iPhone. Since it has been opened up several times, yesterday I took the display and palmrest/keyboard off to ensure there wasn't a loose display connector or anything. Nothing. Put it all back together and had the same booting issues (of which I took a couple of videos):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B22vTOIAaAA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klc8H955sO8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNctfyVHFbM

Note that it would do this with or without AC power or the DVI > VGA dongle.

Finally, I got it to boot normally and connected an external display I just bought to diagnose. (No display on the LCD, not even like it was completely without the backlight, which it *WAS* doing early on after I got off the plane). I'm currently on the machine in clamshell mode connected to the display. Also, when it booted, it had the default Leopard background instead of my prior custom one, and was set to 2001 as the date...hmmm

Any friggin clue?! I'm glad that apparently the GPU isn't toast since it's driving the external monitor fine...

 

[Bradbitz11]

WTF, and iCal just had every alarm I've set since 2006 go off.. lol

 

[Bradbitz11]

Well, I'm at a day and a half of uptime now...the LCD was on (no backlight though) for a while, so I turned the backlight setting all the way down to off and turned off auto-adjust for brightness. Apparently since it's not trying to fire the cold cathode tubes to turn "ON" the backlight, there's no power surge or short when it fails, and thereby not overloading the system circuitry/freezing the machine??

So since it's been driving this external monitor fine, and sometimes I have a picture on the LCD (albeit with no backlight), I'm led to believe that it's not a GPU issue, but the internal display itself?? Maybe the flickering was just the backlight going out, and the surging/short circuiting (supposed) was causing the kernel panics and freezing?

I'd just hate to drop ~150 on yet another LCD and install it to find out it wasn't the culprit...I'm going to buy a new MBP after the first of the year, but don't want to have a headless machine until then...

 

[Bradbitz11]

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[Bradbitz11]

Well a not very happy update...

I disconnected the display connector from the logic board and ran the machine on an external monitor for 10 days of uptime (disconnecting the internal
display allowed the machine to reboot without "power surge" that would cause the booting issues like in the YouTube videos).

So today I got the replacement LCD and installed it; it was flickering most of the day, but came and went (not too significant when it was doing it either). Finally it shut down by itself, I rebooted and got the same symptoms as the first post again!!! I was able to get it rebooted a couple of times and running allright, but eventually it'd shut off by itself, and is currently not booting (screen flash, speaker crackle, loop symptoms).

I just don't understand how the GPU can only be "bad" or causing these power issues when connected to an internal display, but absolutely no problems at all when driving an external monitor!

I'm at wit's end. :-(