No backlight randomly on MacBookPro 5.1

Hi, I own a MBP 5,1 (late 2008) and I only use the 9400M graphic processor (never tried with the 96000 GT)... after upgrading to 10.6.3 I've noticed that randomly the screen doesn't light after hibernate. The only way to get it work is to hibernate it again or restarting it...
I've noticed that recently the screen apparently looses light for a fraction of second while I'm working... I know there's an extended repair program for previous MBP and nvidia 8600, but none is said about nvidia 9400... The funny thing is that it's happening only after 10.6.3 upgrade.

I have a late '08 MBP 15" with the dual processors as well. I also have the random screen doesn't light after waking from sleep issue. My solution has been to shine a light on the faint (non-backlit) screen, select Sleep from the Apple menu and then re-wake the laptop. This resolves the problem everytime and is not optimal but it's better than hard restarting the laptop.
Apple needs to know how widespread this issue is so if you are having this problem specifically, please chime into this thread.

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Did you already try to reset the phone by holding the sleep and home button for about 10sec, until the Apple logo comes back again?
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Random shutdowns/backlight shutoff.

Hi - I'll try to keep this saga brief, but that may be a tall order considering the circumstances.
Back story:
The first time I sent my iBook G4 in to AppleCare was June 2006, when the display was showing a single, pixel-high line across the bottom of the screen (about 1/2 inch up from the bottom) when I would adjust the angle of the lid. It came back fixed, but with a worse display issue! Instead of just a line, the screen would now flicker (NOT a backlight problem, in random stripes across the display itself) and turn to grayscale instead of the normal colors. It did this in response to the slightest vibrations (typing, touching the trackpad) and adjustments of the lid. I sent it in again with explicit information about what caused the malfunction and how to replicate it.
The iBook was promptly sent back to me, without any contact being made beforehand, because the techs "couldn't recreate the problem." Great. Allow me to note that I "recreated" the problem the FIRST time I booted it up out of the return box from AppleCare - within about thirty seconds. Needless to say, at this point I was less than pleased. I wound up taking the iBook into the university bookstore, where we have an Apple tech but not a full genius bar. I was able to show him the problem in person and leave the iBook in his care. Several days later, I found out that he had to ship it off to AppleCare anyway because it was something they'd looked at before.
It finally came back and yes, the display was no longer going wonky, but I now had a lid that would not align properly and thus would not latch, a non-working microphone, and a small scratch on my LCD. I had let the lid and scratch slide for a couple of weeks, but was getting ready to call Apple Care about the microphone (I needed it for a class) when my hard drive decided to take a nosedive. Over a series of a few crashes, in the midst of which I was able to back up my most important materials - thank goodness - the hard drive completely died and the iBook would eventually either only boot up to a blue screen, a gray screen with the apple and spinning gear, a gray screen with nothing, or a blue screen with an OS 9 icon in the middle. Off it went to Apple Care, AGAIN.
It came back today with a new hard drive. I used it for a few minutes before retrieving my power source, thinking it would be fine since though my battery runs down quickly, it was showing a 65% charge and I had a few minutes. At this time, I was still using the pre-installed Panther and getting ready to reinstall Tiger and all my other stuff. I was chatting on iChat when the iBook completely shut down.
I went and got my power source, plugged it in, and booted back up. I got an error message saying my date and time was set to some time before 2001... Except when I actually checked my clock/calendar, it was set to the correct time. My friend suggested I might need to do a PMU reset, so I shut down and did so.
The iBook worked fine for a couple of hours, until my backlight randomly turned off. It did NOT go to sleep - the backlight just turned off. This has never happened to me before - I could barely make out the outline of my open windows on the screen, so I knew it was the backlight out and not a crash. I closed the lid and the backlight flickered on the way down. When I re-opened it, the light came back on.
Several hours later, after I'd reinstalled Tiger, with a 99-100% charged battery, with my power source plugged in and the light green - another crash. I believe this was an ACTUAL crash, like the first one I described. I attempted to restart the iBook and it wouldn't power back up. I tried several times, then did another PMU reset, and it finally booted back up.
MOMENTS after it powered back up from crash #2, crash #3 occurred. Or so I thought. The iBook would again not respond to the power button, so I shut the lid and heard a chime after it was shut. I reopened the lid and the iBook was booting back up. I don't know if this was a backlight malfunction I mistook as a crash, or what.
Note: none of the times the laptop actually CRASHED did I get a low battery warning or any advance indication I was having some sort of a power failure.
On to another backlight failure: it was about an hour after the last crash. I was configuring some World of Warcraft settings in windowed mode, with the battery at full charge and the power source plugged in and green. The screen went black and the laptop made a clicking/swishing noise I associate with shutting down. As I was preparing to throw it at the wall (kidding) I noticed that I still felt a slight vibration and heard a slight humming from the body of the iBook. I listened and looked carefully, and sure enough, the iBook was still running, but the backlight had again failed. (Apparently the backlight shutting down is the noise I'm familiar with.) I moved my cursor around, tried hitting "esc" and doing other "wake up" things but nothing would work. This time, shutting and reopening the lid also did nothing. I couldn't see anything to do a regular shutdown, so I did a hard shutdown by holding down the power button. Upon rebooting, the backlight worked like a charm.
Thirty minutes after this, I experienced another actual crash - complete shutdown of the system. I was playing World of Warcraft in fullscreen mode when the screen went black and all system stopped. No noise, no vibrations - it was definitely off this time. I attempted to power back up but again the iBook would not respond to the power button. I closed and reopened the lid, and it still would not respond. I reset the PMU and nothing happened. Finally, I removed and reinserted the battery and it then booted up. Upon booting this time, I again got the clock/calendar set to pre-2001 message, and yet the clock and calendar were both set to the correct time. The battery showed 97% charge, and the power supply had been connected the entire time.
So, that leads me to now. I have no clue what is wrong with it at this point and I am absolutely frustrated that every time I send this thing into Apple Care it comes back with problems - either the same problems, not fixed, or entirely new problems it didn't have before.
I'd really appreciate it if somebody could give me a clue what might be going on here. I repaired permissions, attempted to repair the disk (no repair was necessary) and am currently getting all the updates to take me from OS X 10.4 to 10.4.8. I'm just frustrated because I'm the only person I know out of a whole bunch of very happy Mac customers to have this many problems - I really feel like I have a lemon, but I was told last time I spoke to Mac that they won't completely replace my unit unless I have the SAME problem repaired three times. I'll avoid getting ranty here, and I do plan to call Apple Care in the morning (Saturday 12/1) but I thought I'd post here anyway to see if anybody had any ideas or anecdotes they'd like to share.
Some ideas I have that could be wrong:
-- Logic board failure (Could explain the prior display issues and hard drive failure, I think)
-- Battery (I know it's not holding a charge well, but I don't see what that would have to do with the backlight)
-- Backlight out (Unrelated to crashes?)
That's all I've got. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
random stripes across the display itself
Sounds like the infamous logic board problem that plagued the iBook G3 (Dual USB).
When the iBook does a hard shutdown, it would be normal to get the message about the date being wrong. It's possible that if it automatically connects to the internet, it may immediately automatically reset so that when you check it, it's correct.
Backlight problems? Again, familiar to many G3 owners:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=207731&tstart=0
AppleCare's your best bet, but this will give you some "light" reading and something to think about until you get them called.
Good luck.

Possible loose backlight connection?...

just the other day my laptop monitor backlight randomly shut off. The display didn't go to sleep, because i can still see the display, but only as well as you could if you turned the backlight all the way off.
Before the first time this happened i was attempting to do a screengrab key command and didn't hit the right combination, so i assumed i had activated something else with the command. i hit the combination again trying to revert the command, but nothing happened.
also, I just purchased a dvi to video cable, to hook my laptop to the tv, and hadn't removed the adaptor, so a friend thought that may have been the problem, but even after that it still randomly shuts off.
i try hitting the space bar, "return," and various other keys, thinking the computer went into a strange sleep mode, but they did nothing. i lifted my computer and the light flickered back on. if i put my laptop on my lap, it constantly flickers on and off if my legs move even a bit, making it impossible to work on. this makes me think that a connection is loose somewhere between the base (keyboard) and the lcd screen.
i made an appointment for the genius bar, out of the few times that are convenient to apple, but wasn't sure if anybody else had heard of or experienced this problem?
thanks for you help in advance.
15" MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9)
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I just within the past two weeks started experiencing precisely the same problem, exactly as you describe it.
The school district I work for has an authorized Apple repair center, and when I described the problem over the phone, they agreed that it was probably a loose or pinched cable.
Unfortunately they cannot fix it in house and must send it to Texas for repair. Since this is my only computer for work and school, I just can't part with it for two weeks. I'll have to live with it for now, but please, please, tell me what the geniuses tell you. If I can get it back faster I might go through them.
Hope it turns out to be something minor for the both of us though! I hate to send my baby in for repair for something that fixes itself with a good enough smack to the side

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About 3 weeks ago, my iPod Touch backlight randomly shut off everything else worked fine, but I had to put a light up to my screen to see it. I tried resetting it, restoring it, and basically anything else I could do, so I made an appointment at the Genius Bar at the apple store. The "Genius" at the store restored it on his computer, and the backlight worked fine. Just recently, my backlight randomly went out, again, and the same exact problem from before persists. I really do not want to take bi-monthly trips to the apple store, so it would be great if someone could help me. Also, if the apple employee can fix my iPod, I probably can too. I regret not asking him what he did, but I believe he did some sort of special restore to reinstall the iOS4 firmware. If anyone can help me or tell me what the apple genius exactly did to my iPod, it would be greatly appreciated

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IPod Touch 4G screen flashes on, then backlight turns off. What do?

On a trip to Guatemala my ipod touch backlight randomly stopped working. Sometimes when I press the power button it turns on like normal but then the light immediatly turns off. I can still faintly see the icons and such and the screen still works but I just cant see anything. Is there any fixes or will i have to replace the screen?

Try:
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How to put iPod touch / iPhone into DFU mode « Karthik's scribblings
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IPod suffering from erratic behaviour

I was listening to my iPod the other day (in my pocket, with the hold switch on), when the volume began changing from nothing to full and back again. I took it out of my pocket, and had a look at it. The buttons seemed to work with the hold switch on -this has been happening for a few weeks now, however the menu button would not function. When changing the volume, the box showing how high the volume was would reach full and then become empty, this would go around and around. Occaisonally the forward and back buttons would work, but they would also perform the play and menu functions. I tried to reset the iPod, but nothing happened. I tried turning the iPod off, but it wouldn't turn off. Flicking the hold switch on and off repeatedly returned the iPod to the main screen, and would sometimes turn the backlight on or off. I left the iPod on pause for about five hours (it was over half charged), and when I returned it still hadn't turned itself off. I waited until it had run out of batteries, and fully charged it.
When it was fully charged, the iPod seemed to function normally. However, now when I listen to it (putting it on a surface where nothing can touch it), the backlight randomly turns on, or it returns to the menu screens, and when I have left it off on the table, sometimes the iPod and backlight will turn themselves on. Resetting the iPod doesn't stop it from happening.
Is there anything I can do from stopping these things happening? As you can imagine, it's a nuisance, and I don't want to have to send another iPod back. Thanks for your help.
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It's been a few hours since I last used my iPod now, and it seems that it's not turning off when I leave it on pause. I can't turn it off manually, or reset it. Any help?

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CONTEST on wackiest ipod mini problems..solutions welcome :)

ive had my mini for about 5 years..it got wacky right after warranty was up
so i guess i'll start:
1. menu button does not work .ever.
2. heres a wacky one: i figured out that by switching the hold button on and off u can scroll thru menus..which solves my menu button problem.
3. pause button usually does not work to pause and NEVER works to turn ipod off.
4. backlight randomly turns on..i must switch hold back and forth til it turns off.
5. using the hold button as a menu button has finally stopped working after a few years and now i have to push the back < button thru all my songs until i get to 0.
6. its held together by rubberbands...
7. no i havnt gotten a new ipod and i dont plan to. patient much?
p.s. please no usual or basic solutions..im not new to the ipod world.thank you.

Get new parts.

Early 2008 MacBookPro keyboard backlight off and fans run at high speed

Hi!
I wrote from Turkey.
My Early 2008 MacBookPro 2.40 ghz 4 gb Ram OSX Mavericks machine's keyboard backlight off and fans run at high speed; it seems an exact smc resetting problem.
So i tried the 2 ways of SMC restting procedure; both battery you can move and not, but nothings changed on the situation..
On the way for removable battery; nothing changed but on the way for umremovable battery way; keyboard backlight flashes and gone, but fans are at high speed not changed. So nothing changed.
What can i do right now? i'll wait for your advices
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Your Mac may need a new PRAM battery. Once it is over 4 years old, that often is needed.

Hello, since the last update 10.6.8, my MacBookPro mid 2010 randomly loses the connection with my wifi AppleTV2

Hello,
Since the last update 10.6.8, my MacBookPro mid 2010 randomly loses the connection with my wifi AppleTV2 2. It works well with the connection between myPC and filiaire AppleTV2 els and between my iPhone 2 (3G and 4) and AppleTV2 butpoorly between the MacBookPro and AppleTV2.
Then I must quit and restart iTunes every time to continue to read my films. I repairedmy permissions, I restore my 2 AppleTV2 but that do nothing. I concluded that it is a loss of wireless connection. I do not know exactly what to do ...
If anyone can help

Thanks you rbrian, it seems that your solution is good because after some tests it works very well

My MacBookPro is continuously buzzing, the backlights are not working although it should be on. Tried to cover the sensor, but it's not that. Also, it's telling me that I have no batteries and the charging is not working either.... Any help? PLEASE!!!!

My MacBookPro is continuously buzzing, the backlights are not working although it should be on. Tried to cover the sensor, but it's not that. Also, it's telling me that I have no batteries and the charging is not working either.... Any help? PLEASE!!!!

Intel-based Macs: Resetting the System Management Controller (SMC)

Random Backlighting

My backlight will turn on and off randomly throughout the day. This only stops for a short time if I remove the battery. Soon after if begins again. I also am having some trackball issues. I'm not sure if the two are related. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Disable Auto On/Off from from Option -> Auto On/Off.
Also check Backlight setting in your devices Options -> Screen/Keyboard.
tanzim
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Backlight turning off randomly

I have a late 2009 27" 2.66 iMac (latest OS and updates). Just the other day the backlight started turning off randomly (can still see screen under a light). I have corners enabled and can put the display to sleep, wake it again and the backlight turns back on, but only for a short time. And I have a second monitor plugged in with no problems on that.
I've read that it may need new hardware which I don't really want to be forking out on. I've tried the other things of reseting the PRAM and SMC with no luck.
I've tried to boot AHT to run a diagnostic but for some reason whatever I do I can't get it to run.
Anyone have any suggestions?

It's probably a connection if it does it a lot when moving it. If it's out of warranty, you could use one of these guides to open it up and check for lose wires or connections.
-Bmer
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Possible solution to random Macbook backlight flickering

I was one of the lucky Macbook users who didn't have that random backlight flickering issue which forced many users to send their beloved macbook to change LCD inverter, logic board or other hardware.
I've been using my MA700 for a year and a half now and I'm out of warranty. Few days back I noticed a flickering which kicks in at random, but could be reproduced when setting "put display to sleep" to 1 minute and waiting. The sleep has two stages - in the first one the screen dims a bit and after some time it switches off backlight completely. The flickering ALWAYS occured when going in to the first stage, also it did occur OFTEN while working with my computer AT RANDOM times. Since I'm out of warranty I started experimenting and retracing my steps. Here's what I found out.
About a week before I bought a new HDD for my macbook, as the one (80GB toshiba drive) that came with macbook was too small for me. I replaced it and restored the system. Everything was fine for a week until backlight flicker kicked in and it was very annoying. I even ordered inverter board from ebay. I noticed that my new HDD is emitting a slight vibration which is noticeable even if touching the top of the lcd screen, I thought it is ok, because my new HDD ir 320GB - quite a bit larger than my original one. Today I tried something different.
1. I reproduced the flickering by setting display sleep to 1 minute.
2. Flicker kicked in.
3. I turned of the computer, removed the HDD, attached it to the SATA>USB case and booted from USB Disk while holding alt at start up.
4. Guess what, no more random flicker. Also, I couldn't reproduce flicker while setting display sleep to 1 minute.
5. To double check I put the HDD back in my macbook and booted as usual.
6. Flicker kicks in at random and is reproducable by setting display sleep to 1 minute.
7. IT MUST BE THE HDD.
8. I swapped the 320GB one to the old 80GB that came with my macbook.
9. No flicker at random since. No flicker can be reproduced when setting display sleep to 1 minute.
I think there is some hardware incompatibility, possibly something to do with power consumption or added vibration. I am no expert, but I'm pretty sure the Samsung Spinpoint M60 HM320JI caused backlight flickering on my system as I was able to repeteadly reproduce the flickering effects and eliminate them by swaping back to my old HDD which is Toshiba MK8034GSX (I did this experiment 5 times now - and got the same results everytime I did this).
The most interesting fact is that right after I changed my HDD to large Samsung model I didn't see (or maybe didn't notice) flickering till about the week, maybe some of you had similar scenarious where you crossed out the possibility of HDD as a cause, because flickering didn't kick in for some time.
The easiest way to check if my story applies to you is to remove your hdd put it in a SATA > USB case and boot in your system from your HDD attached to USB. If the flickering stops and it is not reproducable by setting display sleep settings, IT MUST BE THE HDD!
Good luck!
P.S. Excuse my english.
Message was edited by: Siimorglaze

Possibly it is power consumption of your old HDD, that is causing the problems? Anyway I am experiencing this flickering too, and will try your solution...
My flickering is like switching intensity of backlight to dim and back to intensity that is set. It happens after wake from sleep in case that display is more dimmed.
iedutu's flickering seems to be of other kind - something like low refresh rate - video is not clear enough...

No backlight randomly on MacBookPro 5.1

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