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Display is black on boot

Correction: Early 2015 Macbook Pro Retina Display* couldn’t find the option for it, sorry.

So I bought a second hand Macbook Pro, and it was working fine for about a month. Suddenly the display would work on boot. I tried everything to try and troubleshoot it: NVRAM and SMC resets, sleep key sequence etc. After it while it worked, and I went to update my OS. After the update, the display stopped working again.

So my girlfriend took the macbook into the Apple store to see what was wrong. When the genius opened my macbook up, he saw that the SSD installed was a third party one. After some tinkering (removing the SSD, resetting the battery) he got it to work. (I don’t know the details exactly) The genius said the SSD installed was somehow encrypted, and that it couldn’t handle the update.

I came home and turned on the macbook, the display worked fine, but after closing the lid on my macbook for less than a minute, and opening it again, BOOM! the screen was again not working.

I took the liberty of buying a new Crucial SSD and installing it to see if the display would work after swapping the drives, and it hasn’t worked yet.

I was able to format the drive after connecting it to an external monitor and going through the steps, but the display is still dead.

This is my macbook I use for school, and although I don’t have many files on it that I need, i’d like to be able to use it!

Any help is very much appreciated!

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Third party flash drives with adapters are known to give issues on Macs. Some have managed to find decent setups, but the best and most reliable choice remains fitting in an original drive. With little more than you have spent for a Crucial M2 drive you should have purchased a maybe smaller but original second hand drive, or one designed for Macs like those manufactured by Transcend or Owc. There’s no easy solution here..if you want to keep an M2 flash drive you’ll have to do a bit of researching on drives that have suitable firmware and a proper adapter, yet be ready to accept failures and compromises.

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I don't care for an M2 drive, id just like to be able to use the Macbook at all.

How well do OWC drives work? and do you think installing and formatting it is going to fix my display issues? I'd rather not spend money on a Transcend or OWC if my computer isn't going to work regardless.

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@jordannaranja Transcend and Owc develop for Apple devices and they're often recommended as a good alternative by other Techs who do more drive replacements and upgrades than I do. As for a replacement with Transcend/Owc solving your display issues I don't know, as data available on it are scarce and history of your Mac unknown. I would also suggest plugging your Mac to a monitor/TV when screen is black to try gather another bit of info. Troubleshooting a black screen may be complicated as the number of things in picture is big, but one has to start from somewhere and eliminating possible causes of malfunction one of the first steps. If you have an external drive where to install a clean OS and boot your Mac from it would also help adding info.

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The only way to use NVMe / PCIe based third-party SSDs with an adapter used is to disable the sleep function on the MacBook.

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@benjamen50 I'm not much into these jobs and I may be wrong, but I had understood the issue was overcome in 2015 machines. However, in my modest experience I found M2 with incompatible firmware, others just partly compatible..I believe a reliable drive would be a must to allow some decent troubleshooting.

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Sorry no there's no proper correction. Preventing the system from going to sleep is the only solution which then cascades into other problems.

Best to go with a real Apple or one of the direct fit drives from OWC or Transcend.

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Hey guys! Update!

So after some thinking, I took @arbaman ‘s suggestion and bought a replacement OEM ssd off ebay.

When it arrived I did the installation, formatted the SSD (using an external monitor, the display was still black on boot) and no luck. The display was still stuck in that same black screen I hated so much.

After some yelling and moaning, I had a thought that maybe the cord that connects the display to the logic board just needed to be re-seated.

I unplugged and re-plugged that bad boy in and when I turned it on, VOILA! MY DISPLAY WAS ALIVE!

I’ve been sitting and testing shutting it off, putting it to sleep, closing the lid and opening, and all seems to work.

Appreciate all the help fellas, its been a super rough past week for me but this really turned my luck around.

Cheers!

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That proves how difficult is to troubleshoot at a distance without having a chance to try out things. Hard to understand how the Apple store didn't manage to help at all with the Mac in their hands, but as of late we're getting used to read about "geniouses" cluelessness :/

I'd be inclined to think some work was done on your Mac before your purchase and there might be some dirt or flux residues in the connector on the board. Keep at hand some isopropylic alcohol 90% and a toothbrush for a nice clean if it happens again.

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@arbaman No kidding! It came to me when I the first time I realized the apple logo wasn't lighting up on boot. Lead me to think that maybe the first time it was the SSD causing problems, but the second time it was just the display cord. "Genius" is a loose term for them I guess.

And thank you for the advice! I'll be sure to give it a nice clean in the near future!

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@jordannarnaja, we’ll blow me dry and call me dusty!! You Jordan are a steely eyed missleman! After trying all the power on/off and button combinations to no avail. I read your update and YES! I no longer have the black screen of death. Thank you very much.

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Jordan Naranja will be eternally grateful.
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