Strange screen glitch in Macbook Pro 17"

[jstancil]

Hoping someone on here can help me out a little with a problem I'm having with my Macbook Pro. It's a 17" MBP model A1151. It's been used...a lot. Over the last few months I've started to notice some weird screen glitches. Bars of color across the screen, flickering. It seems to be manipulated by moving the screen back and forth though, it would sometimes go away with a little fiddling. Now it doesn't really want to go away with any amount of fiddling. Here is a picture I took, you can just see the question mark folder (no hard drive in right now) above the line were it's jacked up.



I was thinking that it's probably the display cable. However, I have it all apart right now and when I wiggle the display cable directly nothing is happening. Where would you all start first, throw a new display cable in there and see what happens, or do you think I need a new LCD all together...or is it possibly the graphics card??

Thanks in advance for any help!

[chscag]

My guess is it's the graphic chipset which is defective. Since the hard drive is removed you can't do much testing. Put the hard drive back in and take a screen shot of the desktop. If the screenshot looks the same as the display, that means the graphics chipset is probably defective.

Your MacBook Pro was the first model introduced back in April 2006 so it's had a pretty good run. If the graphic chipset is defective, that means a new logic board. If it does need a new logic board it's not worth repairing as the board would cost more than the machine is worth.

[jstancil]

Thanks for the tip, I'll try that out when I get back to the office.

[jstancil]

Alright, took a screen grab of the lower half of the screen and it came out clean with out the glitch. I also connected an external screen through the DVI connections on the macbook, it too was perfect. So from that I think I can safely say it isn't the graphics chipset and I can move on to the display cable right?

[chscag]

Right. Either that or the LCD itself. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the display cable. Thanks for posting back. Let us know how it goes.

[jstancil]

Well, got a new display cable and still seeing the glitch. Guess it's the LCD itself...thanks for your help.

[jstancil]

Just wanted to give you all a quick update on this issue I had. I purchased a replacement LCD on ebay for right around a hundred bucks and it worked perfect. So if you have a similar problem, try taking a screen grab (shift+command+4) and if the picture comes out clean without the glitch you are seeing, it's probably not the graphics card and can be fixed reasonably. Also, plugging in an external display will help you rule out the graphics card, if the external looks perfect without the glitch that shows up on the laptop display, probably the ribbon cable or LCD itself. Thanks again for your help chscag!