Chosen Solution
So I picked up a faulty Macbook Pro. Initially it would not power on at all. Previous owner attempted a battery change and a hard drive change, but I am unsure of the history of the machine. I do believe that liquid damage is a serious possibility though. Anyway, I replaced the old logic board with a new one, and after some work fiddling with batteries and keyboard ribbons, I powered on! The machine gets to the startup chime, the screen flashes bright white for a second, and I can see some vertical lines, before it goes black. I figured this might be due to the previous hard drives not being formatted correctly and such, so I removed them and attempted to boot from a USB drive with a Mavericks install on it. The same flash of white and then nothing. However, I can hear the voice from the install asking me what language I want to install in, which means that’s loading up. So, now what? Is it possible that whatever damaged the old logic board damaged the display? I’ve tried to get it going on my PC monitor with the adapter but I can’t seem to get a signal. I’m not sure if that is because it doesn’t work, or because I’m doing it wrong, so directions on how to load onto an external monitor when you cannot access OSX would be great too.
Yes liquid damage may have shorted the on board display. Connecting to an external monitor would rule in/out the GPU/logic board as source of your video problem. I wonder if a Mavericks boot disk from a different Mac will work on this one. As part of the install process many of the newer versions of OS X install “custom” boot folders. There may be missing extensions (apple speak for drivers) from the USB volume. Try a OS X boot CD or, target booting from a Mid 2010 MBP 13" that is functional. If this answer is acceptable please remember to return and mark it.
