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Display broken: Cable or video card problem?

Here's what my black MacBook C2D 2.0 is doing: When it boots up I see a brief glimpse of the gray screen then it goes black, next, I see a brief glimpse of the blue screen and the "Starting OS X" progress bar then it goes black again never to return. If I hook up an external display everything but the iSight works perfectly.

In System Profiler, it says no display is connected. Also iSight is not seen.

What broken component would be the most likely to cause this? The LCD and backlight are working but something is preventing it from staying on. I know the video card is integrated (GMA 950) on the logic board but I'm hoping there's something else that might be replaceable first.

Answered! View the answer I have this problem too

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Liquid spilled or dropped MacBook ? What happened to the computer before the problem began ?

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I got this from my old roomate and he thinks it may have suffered a keyboard spill.

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Sean, check my answer here:

No Display: constantly goes to sleep except with external monitor

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Hi! When the screen goes black, is the sleep light pulsing? When the screen is black, and you press the power button, does anything happen?

I'm wondering if the laptop is somehow defaulting to external display mode. Try using the alternate function of the F7 key (you'll see the display image on the top of the key) to toggle it back to the laptop's own display.

I've seen issues with bad topcases that cause the screen to go black, but usually that involves a constant cycle of the machine falling asleep and then waking up, over and over.

I would try resetting the PMU (with power off, hold down the power button for 10 seconds until you hear a tone), and also resetting the PRAM, in case the problem is a simple setting that doing these resets will clear out.

Good luck!

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Thanks for the info- I have tried the PMU and the PRAM but I didn't take note of whether it was going to sleep or not. I'll check it out tonight and share what I find. The reason I suspect a component is that the system profiler says there's no display connected.

Thanks again,

Sean

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OK- It's definitely doing the sleep thing. Whenever an external monitor isn't connected and I boot the computer, I get no gray screen, then it goes immediately to sleep with maybe a one second glimpse of the desktop. When I press the power button to wake it, the display appears for a few seconds max and then goes back to sleep. I tore down another broken MacBook and hooked up it's display and inverter but saw no change. I also swapped out the battery connector/sleep sensor with no change. Any other ideas?

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You might want to try the topcase/keyboard from the other machine. I've had machines with defective topcases that constantly went to sleep, so that might just be the problem.

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Sean will be eternally grateful.
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