Your inverter has gone bad or the inverter cable has been damaged. Here's how I fix it: Repairing MacBook Core 2 Duo Installing LCD & Inverter (fast method) A1181

There is a longer guide for doing this but it involves going into the main body and takes three times as long.

I could not find a 2.0 late 2008 macbook, please give us the last three letters of your serial number. My answer may be for the wrong machine.

In my case the bulb that lights the screen was gone. Replacing it fixed the issue, but I had to completely dismantle the screen and had difficulty putting it all back together. but at least it works, even though if it doesnt look as pretty as when new

after months of using the macbook with a dimm and fanishing backlight I now changed the backlight ccfl. It is a bit of a tricky operation, where i had to peel of lots of aluminium tape(bottom of the lcd screen) and un-clip some metal parts, i had to brake( it broke) the plastic edge part, to make the lightbulb sled come out. A lot of patience and "fingerspitzengefühl" made me put the new bulb in. The plastic i managed to glue back together and it is now as new.

if you can solder well, it will not be difficult to solder the cables onto the new bulb. i orderd a bulb with the new cables already soldered. the part cost me 12 euro´s and came out the us.

i am now having a perfect backlight again.

the problem wasn´t the inverter, or the inverter cable it was a bad light bulb. it seems it is possible for the cffl to produce some light now and then, but still means it is broken.

Thanx for all the responses.

best regards

jelmer

Try these:

1. Set your brightness

Sometimes it’s the basic things – your brightness might be set to minimum. Use Fn+F2 to turn up the brightness (you may not need to hold down the Fn key depending on your Mac’s settings).

2. Zap your PRAM

One trick to deal with minor hardware problems is to reset your PRAM and NVRAM. To do this, power down your Mac, then, turn it on and hold down Command+Option+P+R at the same time, until your Mac makes the ‘ding’ noise again. Command is the Apple key, Option may be labelled as ‘alt’ on your computer.

3. Reset your Energy Saver settings

You may need to use an external monitor or VNC for this. While you Mac is booted, open System Preferences and choose Energy Saver. Under ‘Put the displays to sleep’, set the timer to 1 minute, and then wait 1 minute for your machine to go to sleep. Wake it up, and hopefully your screen will spring back to life.

4. Take out the battery

If your Mac is a portable, turn the computer off, unplug the AC power cord, and take the battery out. Next, hold down the power button for 5 seconds, and the re-insert the battery. Then boot up again. In my case, this is what worked.

5. Turn off any Energy Saver settings

My screen only began working again after I went to Energy Saver settings and turned off ALL of them. Which means I'll waste a lot more energy, but at least my screen will be working. (not a bad problem at all)

Good luck!

(also, yes, I have noticed that I am two years late to answering you, but I guess my answer would be useful to other people that might come across this page, such as myself)