Chosen Solution
Hello everyone, I have a Early 2015 Macbook Pro (A1502) that doesn’t boot with the sound and has a black screen. The backlight for the keyboard works, the caps lock button turns on with a green light and the track pad all work which suggests that the logic board is functional. Hooking it up to a secondary display does yield a screen, but it is just the Mojave Desert with no icons or display bars. Things I have tried: Unplugging power/re-plugging power back into logic boardDisconnecting/re-connecting the display cableDisconnecting/re-connecting the SSDResetting PRAMResetting SMS There may be other things I have tried and since forgotten. This issue happened spontaneously. I was watching a video through Chrome, paused said video and got up to use the bathroom, and when I returned the screen was black and now this issue re-occurs. Based on the things I have tried, the core components aren’t damaged and there isn’t water damage apparent anywhere (I haven’t spilled anything near it). I have not made any changes such as SSD or RAM changes to the system. From what I can see, the only thing that doesn’t look right is that the battery is all expanded which is due to heat (the early 2015 model had terrible heat dissipation). The battery holds a charge and the magsafe registers it as charging. The only thing I can think of that would be a display cable replacement but that shouldn’t be the problem either. I am open to all thoughts.
From your description, it sounds like the display inexplicably failed, and this may be the display assembly itself or the display cable. If you shine a light on the front of the display with the machine powered on, do you see any graphical data showing up on the display but without backlighting? If so, there is a problem with the display backlighting - this can be on the board level, the display cable level, or the display assembly level. You may want to inspect the display cable pins and the port on the logic board to see if anything looks damaged. You can also try dusting out the port on the logic board with compressed air. Also, when you boot the machine with an external monitor connected and you just see the desktop background, this is most likely because the monitor is not mirroring and it’s on the login screen. Try typing in the password and hitting return to see if the screen changes at all on the external monitor. Hope these ideas help!
