Chosen Solution
Hey everyone, Unfortunately, the backlight on my Macbook Pro has died. After some research, I think the culprit is a burnt fuse. I stupidly set down my laptop on what I later realized was a wet surface (it wasn’t soaking wet or anything, but apparently wet enough). The display suddenly went black after a few minutes and hasn’t turned back on, even after SMC/PRAM resets. I tried plugging in an external monitor, and sure enough, it works fine. I took a flashlight and shone it on the dead display. I can see everything, leading me to believe it is indeed the screen backlight that’s the issue. I did a lot of research, but I can’t really find any answers on how to go about diagnosing the exact issue and going on to fix it. Does anyone know roughly how much a Genius bar repair would cost? Is it even worth it? My laptop will be 5 years old in a few months, and has a lot of other issues as well (like a dead keyboard that I’m using a bluetooth keyboard to get around and a battery that needs replacing). On the other hand, I did just invest several hundred dollars into other repairs in the last year like a new SSD and new chargers, so if I’d be happy if I don’t have to write it off.
Well, you’ve done an excellent initial troubleshooting and it seems indeed a backlight issue. Forget about Apple support, even if it was just the fuse they would replace the entire logic board bringing overall costs to be not worth the repair. Further troubleshooting depends very much on your readiness to invest time and money on it..it might be as simple as the fuse itself as well as it might be the BL driver and related components. If you have around somebody reputable into Apple boards component level repair it would be the easiest way, but if you feel like it you can have a try yourself.
