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Hi fellow Gerbils,

Have been thoroughly enjoying my Mac experience until now, where seems I've come across a problem with my display. Powers up without issue, and when connected to an external monitor it seems to work fine. The LCD screen however shows nothing but black. The backlight doesn't come on, and all I can really think is that it's either a loose connector for the display, or the screen has somehow died completely. The last time this happened I was able to fix using a PRAM reset (command+alt+P+R) upon hearing the power on chime. No dice this time.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated, since I'm not in a position to fork out for a screen replacement right now.

Cheers in advance!

It occurs when you connect the external display?

It occurs regardless of whether an external display is connected or not. The only way I can see what I'm doing is when I connect to an external display.

Apart from resetting the SMC I would book an appointment with a Genius.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201295

Yep, resetting the NVRAM (called PRAM in older machines, thus P+R keys) and SMC are my usual goto on Macs for this stuff. And, mind you, I've seen it fix some nutty stuff (right-click wouldn't work... touchpad OR known good external mouse).

Does System prefs mention the internal display/screen brightness controls? Does it sleep if you close the lid?

I just did a quick test on my MacBook:

1) Apple menu -> Restart
2) The Restart dialog box appears on the screen
3) Placed mouse cursor over the Restart button
4) Turned off the display by tapping the reduce screen brightness key
5) Clicked on the Restart button
6) MacBook reboots, display turns on, Apple logo appears, login window appears.

Bottom line is that your MacBook Air should always show the Apple logo and the login window after a cold boot or restart even if the Airs display was "turned off" by the OS.

In a dark room look for the backlight to come on before the Apple logo appears. If you don't see that then it is most likely a dead display.

Edit: The above should be undertaken with no external display or adapter connected to your Air.