macbook pro turns on but screen stays black — my solution

Saturday, June 5, 2010 - 1:26 pm
By Colin
Bookmark and Share

The Apple Macbook Pro would turn on, but the screen would not.  The screen would stay black.  I could tell the computer was on because when I hit the “caps lock” key, the green light on the key would turn on and off.

I fixed this the following way (this is basically resetting the Power Management Unit — PMU):

I disconnected the computer from the power cord, and from all other cables.

I held down the power button for several seconds to turn off the computer.

I let it sit 5 minutes.

I restarted the laptop while holding down the Shift key.  This restarted the computer in Safe Mode, with the screen visible again.

After I logged in (in Safe Mode) to make sure everything was ok, I simply restarted the computer the normal way, and the screen behaved normally again.

=================================

If that doesn’t work for you, you could try these steps, documented at apple.com:

Holding down Command, Option, P, and R to reset your PRAM and NVRAM

Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)

Bookmark and Share

4 Responses to “macbook pro turns on but screen stays black — my solution”

  1. mark

    weird…i had this same problem, fixed exactly the same way today. I noticed that this is only a week after you…Perhaps an issue with a recent update?

    #1755
  2. Colin

    I don’t know, Mark. But I’ve had to do this twice in the last 10 days. -Colin

    #1773
  3. Ali

    oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, thank you so so much!

    The shift-key starting up was scary, it took ten minutes to boot up, and when I restarted it, it didn’t work, so I re-did it and did a PARAM reset, and now it looks okay, it restarted on its own without black-screening me.

    Thank you!!!!!

    #1997
  4. Tenzin

    Colin, thank you… much appreciated.

    #2211

Leave a Reply