MacBook booting to black screen

powerstartup

I am currently unable to boot my Late 2013 MacBook Pro. When I attempt to boot, the backlight comes on, but there is no image on the screen.

When I try to boot into Safe Mode (by holding Shift), Recovery Mode (by holding Command + R), I see neither a backlight nor an image.

I have tried to use every resource available.

I have tried:

  1. Resetting SMC.

  2. Resetting NVRAM.

  3. Safe mode boot (no backlight, black screen).

  4. Recovery mode boot (no backlight, black screen).

  5. Verbose mode (backlight, but no image).

  6. Boot off alternative USB (backlight, but no image to choose device).

  7. Opened the laptop hardware and checked the display cable connection

I was using my laptop one day, closed the lid, and when I opened it, this was this issue.

I do tinker with Linux on an alternate partition, but I didn’t do anything in particular prior to this issue. I thought maybe the boot loader got messed up, but I can’t even boot into recovery mode on the macOS partition.

Can anyone make a conjecture as to the cause, and/or help provide me with some debugging tips?

Best Answer

The fact that the back-light worked, but the display did not indicated the problem was with the display, not the logic board. Furthermore, the fact that I was able to project the display onto an external monitor validated that it was a connection issue between the board and the display.

I ordered a $10 USD LVDS cable, replaced it, and the computer now works :)

part in question: https://www.amazon.com/Display-Cable-MacBook-Unibody-A1278/dp/B01N2T3CFD