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jdslow

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 8, 2008
40
28
I'm throwing this out there as a last ditch effort to see if there is some fix I haven't tried yet.

While working today using my external LG UltraSharp display with the 16" MBP open as a secondary monitor, the XDR (built in) display just went black, as if it was going to sleep, but the external display kept working. Thinking this was just an external monitor glitch, I unplugged the display, but the laptop display did not reactivate. After several hard reboots and opening and closing the lid, it finally came back to life. So I wrote it off as some sort of software issue and got back to work. Then, maybe an hour later, the display went black again. This time I have not been able to get it to come back no matter what.

What is odd is that I can see just a faint shadows on the screen when I move windows around and swipe between spaces. It also responds to the backlight dimming control and I can see the backlight get brighter.

Things I have tried:

- Max brightness on the XDR display
- Various combinations of screen mirroring/refresh rates/resolutions on the XDR display
- Various combinations of hard/soft reboots and power cycles. Both with and without the external monitor connected
- Resetting nvram/pram
- Booting into recovery mode (have to use external monitor) and running disk util checks. No issues found.
- Reinstall MacOS from recovery mode
- Calling phone support (they literally had no suggestions)


I am afraid I'm going to be headed to the (not very close) genius bar. The problem is that this is a BTO machine and apple is showing ~2 months out on their order page.

Any other ideas for things to try?

Edit: fixing typo
 
Last edited:
Sounds like a hardware fault.
If you invert colors, in Accessibility > Display, does it still stay black?

btw, I assume you mean 14" or 16", not 15"
 
Yep! Still haven't mentally adjusted to have a 16" MBP after a decade plus of 15" ones.

I tried the color invert and it stays the same. But I did just notice that I can put high a contrast background and see that the mini LED backlighting is definitely working. It is darkening the black parts of the screen and I can see it light up a round spot around where the mouse is moving. So its like the LCD layer is just not displaying anything.
 
It seems it could be hardware failure.
I suppose you can see on external monitor what’s happening on screen… First thing I would do is a “hardware check” that is offered in startup options (holding power on).
( I’m not sure if the external monitor keeps working when starting up from that special partition of disk, though).
 
It seems it could be hardware failure.
I suppose you can see on external monitor what’s happening on screen… First thing I would do is a “hardware check” that is offered in startup options (holding power on).
( I’m not sure if the external monitor keeps working when starting up from that special partition of disk, though).
In order to get the external monitor to work, I have to guess at when its in the startup option screen and then shut the lid!

I tried the diagnostic. It says it found a problem with my trackpad (which is working fine). Hah! Nothing about the totally non-functional display.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll be taking it to apple tonight.
 
Sounds like a backlighting/logic board issue of some kind. Best wishes with Apple, they should hopefully get you straightened out.
 
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