Remove the four 3 mm indicated Phillips #00 screws from the front wall of the battery compartment. When working from the left, remove the 2nd, 4th, 7th and 9th screw.
Starting near the display and working around to the front of the computer, pry up on the upper case. It is held with clips on the right above the optical drive. These will release with some firm lifting pressure.
Be careful when prying up the upper case. It's very easy to slice open a fingertip and thus provide the blood sacrifice the Mac gods sometimes require of those who insist on doing their own repairs.
There's a trackpad and keyboard ribbon connecting the upper case to the logic board, so don't pull the upper case off entirely just yet.
If you have trouble getting the clips to release, be careful that you are not prying the plastic top of the upper case away from its metal frame.
While holding up the upper case (from the bottom or the top), use a spudger to pry up the orange trackpad and keyboard cable from its connector.
Take care to pry between the black socket and the white connector. You might have to pry on both sides for it to release properly.
Do not pry from the bottom or the top, but from the sides.
If you happen to break your upper case cable when removing the upper case, we stock the cable individually and we have a guide that makes replacing it easy.
Use a spudger to carefully disconnect the microphone cable from the logic board. You'll want to work from side to side, and slowly wiggle the connector out of its socket.
Pulling on this connector vertically will break the socket off the logic board. This connector should be removed horizontally by gently pulling the microphone cable toward the screen while working a spudger between the connector and the socket.
The following steps should be identical for both white and black MacBooks.
Use a thin plastic card to release the tabs holding the front display bezel to the display assembly. There are five tabs along the left side of the display bezel.
Lift up the front display bezel from the top and use your plastic card to free the tabs along the bottom edge of the display bezel.
Make sure that your card is between the metal frame around the LCD panel and the display bezel and not touching the LCD panel itself.
After freeing all holding tabs, lift the front display bezel away from the display assembly.
When reinstalling the front display bezel onto the display housing, you may find it easier to get the tabs and clips to connect if you push on the four sides of the bezel in this order: top, bottom, then the sides (left or right). You may have to apply extra pressure along the bottom side of the bezel to get it to snap into place firmly.
Sometimes when removing the front display bezel, the retaining clips that should remain captive in the LCD brackets come out with the front display bezel. Follow this and the next step to transfer the clips back to the LCD bracket.
Use a metal spudger or another thin tool to carefully pry the gray plastic clips off the tabs molded into the front display bezel. A 0.8mm flat screwdriver may be useful for this step. You may find that it's easier to remove some of these clips by prying up on their long sides.
Be careful, as the clips are made of thin plastic and are inherently delicate.
Insert one end of the retaining clip beneath the edge of its recess cut into the LCD bracket.
Use the edge of a spudger to push the short hook tab on the underside of the other end of the retaining clip into the recess cut into the LCD bracket.
The second picture shows a retaining clip properly installed.
You may find it easier to get the short hook tabs on the underside of each end of the clip to fit down inside their cutout in the LCD bracket by first very slightly bending down the two ends of the clip, but be careful not to bend the clips too much--only a slight bend is needed, and too much force will break them.
While holding the display down with one hand, use your other hand to lift the left end of the clutch cover off the clutch hinge and guide the inverter cable and AirPort cables through the gap in the clutch cover. If the cables snag on the two hooked tabs on the inside end of the clutch cover, free them carefully.
It may help to wiggle the clutch cover as you pull it up from the display.
During reassembly, make sure not to pinch the black inverter cable or the Airport wires when snapping the left end of the clutch cover back into place. To avoid pinching, it may help to lift up and hold these cables and wires in place at the top of the hinge, rather than leaving them running along the sides of the hinge.
Lift up the right end of the clutch cover while guiding the display data and iSight cables through the gap and the two hooked tabs at the right end of the clutch cover. If the cables snag on the two hooked tabs, free them carefully.
Lift the clutch cover off of the display assembly.
During reassembly, avoid pinching the display data and iSight cables. While guiding the right end of the clutch cover into place, but before snapping it down, guide these cables between the two hooked tabs inside the right end of the clutch cover, and up into the curved area of the clutch cover, above the hinge.
Also avoid pinching the backlight wires (with the white connector on the end, plugged into the right end of the inverter). They should run under the upper right edge of the clutch cover. In some models, the two wires are gray and black, and in others they're white and pink. They lead into a hole in the lower right edge of the LCD to the backlight.
while this is the offical way to replace an inverter, those of us at the repair depot quickly learned a much faster why that only involves removing the display bezel and clutch cover.
remove display bezel like normal.
remove the 3 screwa from the clutch cover.
pry lose the clutch cover while the lid is open and then some more when it is closed to get it to pop off.
replace inverter and then carefully replace the clutch cover in the reverse of before.
you may need to clip off the top parts of the tabs inside the clutch cover to get it to replace easier, these serve no purpose and can be safely snipped if needed
we had a few thousand macbooks on hold because we had ran out of stock on the inverters that we were forced to come up with this method to get them all repaired in 1 day when the shippment of inverters finally came in after 2 months of being out of stock. this turned a 30-45 minute fix(including our documentation) into a 5-10 minute fix