Screen is black(off), but chime ok. Need help clean install...

[ZnakeByte]

Hi there,

I'm new with macs, so please forgive my lengthy story here:

I friend got unlucky and spilled some juice over her macbook 13" (white, late 2009), so she gave it to me. Luckily I have repaired laptop PCs for many years, so i thought I'd see if I could fix it. (would be nice with a free macbook, wouldn't it?)

First thing I did was of course to disassemble the whole thing, clean it up, and put in new RAM and harddrive (my friend took out hdd/ram before i got it). The spillage inside was a minimum, so i had my hopes up.

I turned on power, and to my (big) surprise the welcome chime sounded, and the quistion-mark folder showed. Hurray. It is a brand new harddrive so i though, now I just need to install Mac OS X -> happytime!

I didn't have any OS-DVD, so i borrowed my brothers grey mac os x dvd that came with his Mackbook Pro 15", hoped it would work. But when i booted and pressed 'c', it sounded like the dvd was loading, the apple-logo showed on the screen, and the "turning wheel" showed. But after a while the screen turned black, and nothing more happened, other than the DVD was spinning up now and then, and the small led light in front also lit up a couple of times now and then. I waited about 20 mins I think, before I held down the power button to turn it off.

After several tries (with the same result), I searched the web for tips, and found a thread who described exactly the same thing. Many users there had had some luck with resetting the SMC (shift+ctrl+option+power simultaneously) and resetting PRAM and VRAM (Command+Option+P+R simultaneously after boot.

I tried all this, but when I turn the power on now:
- The chime sound
- The little led light in front light up and then fade out (once)
- The screen is completely off

If I close the lid, the light in front lights up, but turns off when I open the lid again.

I know it's a long shoot to get this macbook to work, but i feel I was getting somewhere earlier when I got the apple logo to show.

Anyone out there who can help me?

 

[biohead]

The grey restore disks are model specific. You either need a restore disk from a late 2009 macbook, or a full retail disc.

Not too sure on the screen problem though.

 

[stoveguy]

what did friend do with original hard drive? probably kept it to pull data/files. maybe get it from them? does friend have system discs? its a 2009. maybe they do. not like they bought it a decade ago.

 

[ZnakeByte]

A little update: I borrowed a retail disk today from a friend, and the machine seemed to work perfectly well, except theres no lcd-activity. I hear reading from the dvd, and i can turn the caps-lock light on and off. So it seems like everything is ok, but the screen.

I disassembled it once more, and found to-three of the pins in the lcd-cable-contact to be black (burned maybe?). It's strange I got picture last night, but maybe some signals where sent to the lcd-electronics when i did all the resetting, and it got fried then... I don't know.

Never the less, I did some heavy cleaning of the contacts, so if they are only damaged on the outside (still conductors underneath the burnt surface) I may get it to work tomorrow when it's dried up.

I'll keep you posted.

 

[ZnakeByte]

I got the macbook working, and installed the OS yesterday. I was so happy, but after a couple of hours, the screen got dead once more

More cleaing this eveing i guess...