Not sure if any of you have found your iPad with a dead black screen, even when it’s fully charged, but it’s possible to restore it with a simple maneuver.

A friend had taken his iPad 2 into the local Mac Store, when the startup screen wouldn’t light up, and learned that he’d need a screen replacement at about 50% of the cost of a new iPad, because the screen was irretrievably damaged.

I’d accepted the verdict when making a house call on another tech issue, and asked if he’d been backing it up regularly. As often is the case, many people never plug their iPad into a computer which instantly invokes iTunes starting up and as a part of any Sync routine backs up the iPad contents.  No backup in several years, so all the photos, contacts and apps they’d accumulated were lost.  If they’d used iCloud for a cloud based duplication many of those items would have been available on their home iMac, but they hadn’t turned that on either.

The screen had a very dim glow in a darkened room so I tried to plug it in the computer and do a backup but it needed the passcode which was impossible to enter on the dark black glass.  I took it home after trying numerous work arounds but none could circumvent the passcode requirement.

At home on the internet I found many sites suggesting all the things I’d already tired, but one forum had a bizarre post saying to place the fully charged and recently turned on iPad in your lap, glass down, and slap the back and check to see if it would fire up.  If it didn’t respond, try again, slapping much harder.

Imagine my surprise when I turned it over after the second harder slap, and produced a deep black screen with the plea to stopped hitting it, and wait 2 minutes.

After the 2 minute “time-out” from punishment. it lit up with the most recent iOS splash screen, and accepted my “swipe to start” flick as well as the passcode we’d been trying to enter blind.

Hope this helps someone. Evidently the iPad took a “jarring” and something got loose.  Now it’s reconnected and working perfectly.