rMBP display stays black when booting

[cstm]

Opened my rmbp this morning from sleep but the display was black and the computer unresponsive. I shut it down holding the power button and tried to reboot. Still display stays off when booting, but there is the starting sound and you can hear the thing running. Resetted everything and tried safe mode. Could this be ssd failure? Caps lock light doesnt light up when i press it and the thing wont go to sleep, so i doubt its just display failure. It's 3,5 years old

 

[CoastalOR]

Opened my rmbp this morning from sleep but the display was black and the computer unresponsive. I shut it down holding the power button and tried to reboot. Still display stays off when booting, but there is the starting sound and you can hear the thing running. Resetted everything and tried safe mode. Could this be ssd failure? Caps lock light doesnt light up when i press it and the thing wont go to sleep, so i doubt its just display failure. It's 3,5 years old

Try booting into Recovery (command+r at startup) which will use your recovery partition on the SSD.
Try booting from your backup to eliminate the internal SSD.
More information about your system could be helpful. What model MBP (year, screen size, dGPU, OS)? Could you explain more on what you reset?

 

[cstm]

Hey thanks for reply.

its a 15 inch mid 2012. 2.6/16/256/650m with igpu also. I tried pram/nvram reset which brought the start sound back and smc reset. I also tried booting to safe mode. any way i can boot it from timecapsule? thats where my backup is, luckily my latest back up is only week old or so. i used it last night before i went to sleep and there were no issues, something happened to it during my sleep. I only had like 1gb of free ssd space. maybe an automatic software update messed it up? I connected my ipad to it and it shows it's charging the ipad but my ipad dropped from 18% to 17% while plugged in so I guess it's not actually charging. Btw the mbp was not plugged in during the night so elecric current damaging it is not possible

 

[CoastalOR]

Hey thanks for reply.
its a 15 inch mid 2012. 2.6/16/256/650m with igpu also. I tried pram/nvram reset which brought the start sound back and smc reset. I also tried booting to safe mode. any way i can boot it from timecapsule? thats where my backup is, luckily my latest back up is only week old or so. i used it last night before i went to sleep and there were no issues, something happened to it during my sleep. I only had like 1gb of free ssd space. maybe an automatic software update messed it up? I connected my ipad to it and it shows it's charging the ipad but my ipad dropped from 18% to 17% while plugged in so I guess it's not actually charging. Btw the mbp was not plugged in during the night so elecric current damaging it is not possible

I do not know any way to boot from your Time Machine backup in the Time Capsule without removing the Time Capsule drive and putting it in an external enclosure. That seems like too much trouble for an experiment to troubleshoot the problem. As you pointed out only 1 Gb of free space on your SSD can be a problem, but I do not think it would cause a black screen.

Your 2012 rMBP dGPU has a known failure problem and is covered by Apple's MacBook Pro Repair Extension Program for Video Issues that will end February 27, 2016. I would make an appointment with Apple to have it evaluated under the repair program. Even if it is not the the dGPU they could figure out the problem in process of running diagnostics.

 

[cstm]

I do not know any way to boot from your Time Machine backup in the Time Capsule without removing the Time Capsule drive and putting it in an external enclosure. That seems like too much trouble for an experiment to troubleshoot the problem. As you pointed out only 1 Gb of free space on your SSD can be a problem, but I do not think it would cause a black screen.

Your 2012 rMBP dGPU has a known failure problem and is covered by Apple's MacBook Pro Repair Extension Program for Video Issues that will end February 27, 2016. I would make an appointment with Apple to have it evaluated under the repair program. Even if it is not the the dGPU they could figure out the problem in process of running diagnostics.

interesting, didn't know that thanks! would it still boot up with black screen and not use the igpu if the dgpu was the problem though?

 

[CoastalOR]

interesting, didn't know that thanks! would it still boot up with black screen and not use the igpu if the dgpu was the problem though?

Yes, read the Symptoms section in the link I provided. The failed dGPU prevents the MBP from operating properly even though you have a iGPU.

 

[cstm]

Ok thanks. I don't know what the issue was, but I tried booting the rmbp to a (which had a previous yosemite installer) usb stick that I had like you suggested, it didn't work, but it lit up the display. I restarted the mac and this time it booted to my old desktop without issues. I had 2gbs free space on ssd so maybe it was able to access additional space on the usb stick. So it's working now, although I'm scared to use the dGPU if that's the issue and the same happens. Thinking about making a clean install if there's some corrupted software that caused this.

 

[cstm]

Turns out I was too early, computer crashed when my mac auto launched el capitan installer after it had downloaded. Seemed like the gpu changed from integrated to discrete when the application launched and the thing crashed. It only will restart if I try to boot it from el capitan bootable usb drive. It won't boot from it but it brings the computer back to life. Now I've been able to use it without crashes by forcing integrated, so I guess it's the dGPU. I can't find kernel panics on the console logs though.

EDIT: It was the 650m which caused this and apple is replacing the logic board.