Chosen Solution
My MBP a1226 has that not unusual problem of a screen that looks black, but I can still see very faint graphics on it. I must be upfront and say that before the screen went totally black, it started looking really weird with light/dark stripes of light at its bottom. I tried to attach a photo here, but it didn’t work… so please just take a look at the pics on this post because it’s exactly like my screen looked like before going totally black: LED Back light problems.) So, I researched iFixit for a solution and decided to try replacing the LED Drive Board first. I did it and the screen came back on for like 10 minutes and it went black again. Weird, right? Then, since I’m not home but traveling abroad doing volunteer work -and seriously guys, you have no idea how hard it is to import parts overseas! - I decided that I’d hook the MBP to an external monitor and just go from there. It’s worked wonders but it’s not ideal since I need mobility. Anyway, what would eventually happen is - and this is the enigma I mentioned - the MBP screen would work and then go black… the time it would stay on varied. For about a month it remained black and I just used it hooked to the external monitor. Then yesterday, after not turning it on for about a week, I fired it up and voila: the screen was back and working. It worked for like 12 hours and then went black. I turned it off and just turned it on again this afternoon and the screen once again worked up until when I turned it off. Now I tried to turn it on again and it didn’t work! Because I’m in a country where winter time is approaching and we’ve had very cold days, I started to wonder if it was something due to heating… I have read stuff online about people having great experiences about substituting the thermal paste. However, I don’t think that’s the case. I know that my LCD certainly needs to be replaced at some point but given how old my computer is, I’d just rather keep on cutting some corners and really kick this can down the road. I am entertaining the idea that it could really be the inverter cable, but iFixit troubleshooting page says that’s the case if the backlight fails intermittently while moving the display. I have moved it a bit around and played with the angle of the top case to see if I’d see any changes while it was on and nothing really ever changed. It seems that moving it around has no implications on the screen at all. So what is really the problem here? That’s one enigma I can’t solve and buying parts to later find out they won’t resolve my problem is really frustrating not to say costly. I know it’s not the LED Driver Board. I have dropped the idea it could be the logic board because it works when connected to an external monitor. LCD needs replacement because of those dark/light stripes at the bottom of the screen, but it still works whenever my MPB “decides it’s a good day for its screen to work again.” After reading this book chapter I’ve just written, would you be able to help me solve this enigma? Or should I hire a private detective? Update (06/09/2016) Tried replacing the inverter/iSight cable. Same problem persists. Now I wonder is it’s the LCD… the troubleshooting page for this model says that once LED Drive Board and inverter cable have been ruled out, the next step would be replacing the LCD… honestly I’m so over it that I may just buy this whole screen piece instead of just a new LCD. Thoughts? Please share!
You’re going to hate me here ;-} If it’s not the LED driver board its self, then its probably the cable leading to it. Take a look at this guide: MacBook Pro 15" Core 2 Duo Models A1226 and A1260 LED Driver Board Replacement jump down to Steps 13 & 14. The cable maybe worn or damaged leading to the socket. Over time the flexing of the lid can break it down. The other possibility is the fuse link. In this case you don’t have a real hard dark screen so I would suspect one of the solder joints was failing making an intermittent connection. Here’s a vid by Louis Rossmann as he walks though the different parts and in his case the fuse link was blown Macbook Pro A1211 no backlight motherboard fault & repair. I would note the reason the fuse went here was likely a damaged cable so that too would need to be fixed, which he does not get into.
