Backlight on macbook pro stopped working

Question

Hi,
I am new to apple, I purchased a second hand macbook pro 15" recently (1.83Ghz 2GB Ram, 220GB HDD). I'm pretty sure it has the most recent vesion of Leopard (cannot confirm). The only real issue with it was the battery life (about 15mins)
anyway, I recplaced the battery yesterday... when I tried to turn the machine on the screen lights up "as normal" I get the apple startup chime.... but then the screen just goes dark.. You can kind of see the desktop and windows etc if you tilt the screen toward the light but there is zero backlighting. I tried the F1 & F2 keys, nothing :-/
I plugged my PC monitor into the DVI port and it works fine. So, I managed (with great difficulty) to get the system prefs open and onto the secondary monitor. When I click "displays" it just hangs with the spinning rainbow cursor and never actually opens the display preferences.
To make matters worse I thought I'd try starting the computer from the OSX leopard DVD... which worked, but still no backlight whatsoever. So it's in DVD boot mode now... cannot seam to eject the disc either.
Yes, I tried with the old battery... no love
I'm happy to take it in to get fixed if I have to... But I'm wondering if anyone knows what is going on with it, or if there is something I've done to it..
Cheers
Dan
Message was edited by: dannymars
Message was edited by: dannymars

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Discussions and the world of Mac. Hopefully subsequent experiences will be better than your initial one.
It sounds like the second hand MBP has an inverter problem. The inverter is a high voltage circuit that powers the fluorescent lamp that backlights the LCD display. That kind of failure is a hardware failure so a repair will be required.
Since you have an external monitor, do you also have a USB mouse and keyboard? If you do, you can use the MBP with the lid closed with all those external peripherals attached and it should make controlling the Mac easier without the internal display working. Just attach the external monitor, mouse and keyboard and the MBP's power adapter and hit the start button on the MBP and then immediately close the lid on the MBP. That should cause the internal screen to stay off and only the external screen to be used. Alternately, if the MBP is already running, if you close the lid, it should go to sleep. Then, keep the lid down, and hit the space bar on the external keyboard and that should wake the MBP up with only the external screen active. The power adapter needs to remain attached to the MBP for the above the work. Good luck.