Ipad screen keeps flashing on and off

[Billyd]

Whenever I turn on my IPad, the screen will start flashing on and off or flickering. Sometimes it will go black for a few seconds. After being on for a little bit, it finally stops flickering.
Anybody else ever heard of this problem? Any advice, tips, or help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[peled]

If it happens after a full reset, it means a hardware problem

 

[twerppoet]

If it still happens after the reset peled mentioned, call Apple Tech support. It will probably have to be replaced.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4057

Hmm, the link appears to be broke due to scheduled maintenance. In case it isn't working before you get to it, here is the part you need.

Follow these steps, testing after each:

Turn the iPad off and turn it on again. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button on top of iPad for a few seconds, until a red slider appears. Then slide the slider. Then press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the Apple logo appears.


Reset iPad. Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.

 

[msohio]

James….I send this because I am sure you and your Genius folks use a huge data base for problem solving. I told you yesterday all went well at the store and it did. I said everything loaded and it did. I had tried my ear buds at the store and they worked fine. BUT when I went to use them last night in bed to listen to music while I read,the same flashing screen occurred. The buds worked fine in my iPod, just not the iPad 2.Back to square one.

I was ****** I can tell you. Then I let my engineering brain decide what were the odds that I could get a bad headphonejack twice. And in the case of the new one, have it fail in less than 24 hours.I came up with nothing, but this morning I had an idea. It had to be a conflict with an app not a hardware issue, but which one??

In the store, just before I left, the Genius man helping me told me it was Apple’s policy to have the customer delete the data on their returned product. He led me to the Reset Screen, I pulled the trigger and erased all content and settings. So I thought what if I do a complete erase as I did atthe store and re-build the iPad 2 from scratch. Went to the Reset screen and saw there were a bunch of reset options. Decided that before I did the complete erase, I’d try the others. So I started at the bottom and worked up. Location Warnings, Home Screen Layout, Keyboard Directory, Network settings, and last Reset All Settings, which is supposed to leave data and media intact but blitz everything else. The last one caused an automatic full reset with the logo and all. When it came back on, I went to the iPod app and started playing some music.Sound as expected. Plugged in the ear buds, sound in the ear bugs, no flashings creen. Restored my settings, etc. and seem good to go. Yee HAW !!

So the pattern was: headphone jack worked in the store on the replacement iPad, then I did a restore from iTunes and it did not work, Erased the settings and now it works. Some app is the devil, maybe even one I put on and deleted but it left tracks that caused the conflict which were elininated in the Reset Setting move.

Really don't know what was wrong or why this fixed it, but it did.

 

[twerppoet]

You do realize that this forum is not associated with Apple, let alone the Genius bar? I suppose it is Possible that James reads the forum. It does have a large user base, but the chances of him finding this post hidden in a mostly unrelated thread is miniscule.

If you want to contact James I recommend you contact the Apple store where you met him. They should be able to give you his work email, or pass on your information. The other place to post stuff you want to be sure Apple notices is on their discussion pages.

Here, we are just a bunch of enthusiasts helping each other to get the most out of our iPads. And having fun.

 

[msohio]

James asked me to post this on the several forums that had a thread on this issue and I did so to help others that might find this solution works for them as it did for me. James is a part of the Apple support team that I worked with to solve this issue and is preparing a submission to have this in the Apple Support Knowledge Base.

 

[twerppoet]

Ah.