[carterx]

I have a MacBook Pro with a blacked out screen, but you can still see the desktop. To me this is one of two options... the backlight which I assume means the purchase of a new LCD display, or the inverter board.

What would be the best way to track which problem this could be.

Thanks,

[ltlasset]

well... your cheapest option would be to buy a new inverter board and inverter cable off ebay and try that... that should cost $30 max. If that works, then your good, if not then you might need to replace the LCD, which is more expensive, or it could be a logic board problem. However, like I said, try a new inverter + cable first, then proceed to more expensive options. The fact that the desktop is there tells you that the LVDS cable is fine.

[Raining Down in Texas]

If you recently upgraded to Leopard, you might have a software issue. My MBP backlight sometimes failed to come on after a reboot after I installed Leopard. If I logged into my account (blindly), I could then use the brightness keyboard commands to bring up the brightness.