Unplugged my iPhone while Macbook Pro was asleep, now it has a dark screen

Question

I was charging my iPhone last night through my laptop (in a foreign country), and I closed the lid on my 15" Macbook Pro... When I unplugged my iPhone from the USB Port this morning, I heard the hard drive turn on, or maybe it was just the fan, but I just put my laptop in my backpack and didn't bother to check if it was on or off.

4 or 5 hours later, I go to wake it up from sleep mode. It had a hard-rubber case on it, which had a lot of holes for air, but could it be a possible overheating problem? My computer is 2 years old + (silver keys, with a mousepad/mouse-button), and here are some things I've already tried:

1. Rebooting while holding down the shift button, nothing happened.
2. Rebooting while holding down Command + Option + R + P... heard the chiming noise about 5 times, nothing happened.
3. Unplugging the power adapter, taking out the battery, and holding down the power button for 10-15 seconds.

I'm so scared that I'm out of options and this happened so randomly. I'm in a foreign country as I stated before and don't have my startup DVD with me or anything. I use my laptop for work as well as finding directions while I'm on my trip, and it is very important that I find a solution fast, so thanks in advance! I don't think the country I'm in has an Apple Store, but there are repair shops that claim they do Apple jobs (who knows if they're certified, but I still have a warranty, and I don't want to pay).

If you want me to clarify, the screen is verrrrrry dark. If I squint very hard it looks like somebody is holding a faint candle up to the screen. It seems like the computer is still in "clamshell mode" and still thinks the lid is closed, but the computer is on.

I will try to plug it into an external monitor for now, but do you guys have any experience with this? Your help is appreciated!

Answer 1

If you can see a faint image on the screen, then the backlight is not working. You should be able to use a bright flashlight to see a little bit of the screen (from the front, or from behind the Apple logo) to make sure that the computer is otherwise starting up OK. Two ideas:

• Try adjusting the backlight using the brightness keys on the keyboard. Turn it up all the way.
• Try resetting the SMC (it sounds like you may have already done something like this, but try again with the order and timing described in the article).

When a USB device is (dis)connected, the computer should wake up and go back to sleep after a few seconds. Was it hot when you took it out of the backpack?

Answer 2

Resetting the PRAM was a good move. Next, you need to try to reset the PMU, the directions for which are here http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1431

Do write back and let us know how it worked.