MacBook screen darkness/shadow on left side

bpbpbp

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Jun 30, 2016
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Macbook late 2009 13"

It's been over heating more than usual, particularly on the left, in the general area of the S key. Finally I took the back off and and vacuum cleaned it and that seems to have stopped it overheating. Must have been a build up of dust/fluff under that board.

I can't remember exactly the timing but I'm pretty sure it's connected with the overheating: I noticed the screen, along the bottom, started to show a kind of slight rippled shadows effect – right along, all along the bottom. Only small, constrained right to the bottom so not a major problem. Just recently though, all of a sudden and it hasn't changed since, the left half has a dark fading patch, shadow like effect making it hard to see stuff on the left of the screen.

It looks exactly, identical to this:
Apple 27inch iMac, screen fade
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow5d0BYTJIE

I guess the overheating has effected something about the screen.

Which part is most likely dodgy/broken do you think? The LCD screen itself? Or something else? I'm worried about getting a replacement LCD screen and it turning out to be something else.

Thanks.
 

bpbpbp

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Jun 30, 2016
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Well I went ahead and got a "new" (2nd hand) screen – reasonably cheap on eBay. It fixes the backlight problem totally, so I'm replacing the right thing (so that answers my above question), but it seems the new screen I've got isn't working… there's an entire absence of any graphics. It's blank. But the backlight's working very well.

Any thoughts on how to get the new screen to show some graphics? Probably not, it's probably just simply broken. Maybe a refund, or maybe I can get something out of the new screen to make the old screen work?; that seems possible but incredibly tricky. I had a cursory look as to how easy it might be to start taking the LCD screen apart, but it really didn't look easy/possible, but maybe it's easier than it looks…. we'll see.
 

BadAsAl

Distinguished
I would not mess with the new screen, any useful parts are behind a glass screen that is glued down and will break if you try to remove it. If you cannot get it working by simply installing it, then send it back and try another one.
So did it boot to just a white screen after you put the "new" screen in?
 

bpbpbp

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Jun 30, 2016
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> If you cannot get it working by simply installing it, then send it back and try another one.

When I bought it, it was indicated that I'd bought the last one, but that turned out not to be true. I was thinking of possibly getting a refund and trying to fix the broken refunded screen; in that situation nothing to lose.


> So did it boot to just a white screen after you put the "new" screen in?

Yes. Went back to the old screen.

Seller sent a replacement screen. He seemed to have a number of them even though it said "last one" on eBay. The replacement is also not right! But in a very different way. There's a vertical band of distortion about an inch or two wide a bit to the right of the centre of the screen. From top to bottom. Pressing the, is it the inverter?, the thing which is covered in black thin tape attached to the bottom of the screen, with my finger I can get that band of distortion to disappear. But it comes back quite easily. Backlight works well though! In fact it's decidedly brighter than my old screen - before its backlight went. I think it had dimmed some years ago. Told the seller the replacement was faulty, sent photos of distortion, and he's refunded me. So I now have three not working properly screens! This third one can work OK sometimes though so that's the one I'm using at the moment.
 

bpbpbp

Commendable
Jun 30, 2016
25
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1,580
Oh yeah, and just for the record, at one point, the old screen started to work again (the bottom left shadow disappeared) for a while but then stopped working properly. I was surprised, I thought the LED light, if that's what they are, had actually gone, but obviously not if it has the ability to come back. Must be connections then - in the screen unit.