Is my iPad 2 screen dead, or is it worse than that?

Question

My iPad 2 has suddenly stopped responding. I had put it to sleep by closing the cover, and when I opened it, the screen was black. There have been no drops or other obvious mistreatment.
So I held down the power button, ostensibly to shut it down. No response. Held down the button again, ostensibly to start it up: no response. Tried that many times with same result. Charged the iPad overnight. Still no response (and no little chime sound that usually happens when I plug in to AC power).
iTunes can see the iPad, so maybe the screen is dead. But with the absence of all responses of any kind, I'm wondering whether it's worse than that.
I'm running iOS 7.0.4, so I suppose I could update to 7.0.6 and see if that helps, but since updates can be dodgy, I thought I'd save that as a last resort. (And yes, my AppleCare coverage is history.)
Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Ralph Landry1      Maryland Re: Is my iPad 2 screen dead, or is it worse than that? Apr 14, 2014 6:11 PM (in response to gyandev) Placing your iPad in recovery mode erases all content and settings, why you would do that in your case is a total mystery.  You lose everything doing that.
There are alot of problems that could have caused you to have to do this. And no you do not loose everything is you have made regular backups.
Here are some reasons
1) itunes makes a new update for your device, there system is so overloaded with people downloading it that some people who downloaded it our missing packets of information this causes an incorect installation and leads to many pieces of hardware malfunctioning
2)usb conection will sometimes turn on and off during some updates, the program itunes dosent seem to check to make sure all the information went through to complete the installation
when either 1 or 2 occurs it is typically in my expereice that a traditional plug it into itunes and do a recovery will not work, you need to bypass several glitchs the IOS update has caused, which may appear to be hard ware glichs IE battery, screen or even after every attempt the update will just stop.
Their are several key components that make up electronic devices
Ram and catch, they require power or electricty to store data, you either need to drain or remove the battery (sometimes residual charge is left in electronic devices... or you may be able to by pass it or in some situations cause the device to ignore the miss writen data.
The battery may say bad on a basic diagnostic test that apple does, but in fact its perfectly fine.
another piece is the storage media, flash and rotaional drives do not need power to store information only to read/write. Individual sectors will go bad over time, and sometimes falsh data that wasn't caught before this point will be written here.
some batters actually have memory,, HDD and storage media and cpu's all have catch which may need to be wiped clean to make a device functioning the method for doing this is differnt for every piece of hardware and sometimes you do not need to take it apart to do it.
There is also ram, which again needs power to store data and will also make bad sectors over time..
if there your device is fully functioning but seems to be a bit slower/ not as good than when you first recieved it, you may need to consider a complete reset. You might notice when your done that the ram size is different that the storage drive has decreased, those are some of the bad sectors that the computer with its long use produced.
In most cases where there is some type of glich that cannot be solved simply by plugin it into Itunes, you might just need to do this. There are several methods posted, and i have tried them all, and most of the time when i needed them they do not work... I had to think, about this..
I needed to do a full recovery, itunes will crash half way through/ will not do the recovery, i need to provide power while placing the device in DFU mode(what i call a hard rest because its like hitting the master reset), because there is a problem/ glich when i try it pluged into a computer I need to use land power, than i need to conect it to itunes..
IT always works, the other methods do not account for the multitude of malfunctions an operating system can cause. This helps to ignore any catch problems, when you conect to itunes it will finish it without a hitch. than you can place all your apps, photos songs ect back in there.
I have had to do this for my own IOS device as well as several others. I typically do this even for random people or i tell them how to do this. Most of them come to me after being poorly disapointed with what the apple tech said.. for me its like if i took my car in for inspection and they said we had to replace the head piston, headmanifold ect, when whats wrong is just a loose wire...
This method should be done prior to doing any expensive fix's as some of the problems you have "fixed" where never really there..
when i was 8 my farther gave me a SCSi hdd that the technitions at his work couldnt fix/ get to work.. He though i would take it apart and see how it worked.. I read the manual, and power scematic, and i came up with my own fix.. plug a jumper into the - and the + jumper to clear the catch while power was going through.. it worked I had a working scsi.. that thing was bigger than an airport extreme curently on the market. I have always had the ability to trouble shoot sense i was alittle boy... I have fixed garmiin GPS as well i wish they still had the physical power switch and not the analog (it was so much easer to reboot them... I was an aircraft maintainer, i have fixed several other computer problems network issuse, hard ware and so on.. Although i have never taken classes in any of it i have learned on my own, and i understand how the device work rather than being told steps to fix it I can find solution where others cannot because i know how they work.. I think that is better than any colledge grad with no reall world experience in true problem solving.