screen randomly goes black

angelo9888 said:

hahahaha
what i m saying is that i had the mac to the city that i was studying and i had to transfer it back in my hometown cause my studies are over... and that happened like a week ago....
the problem appeared like 3 days ago....

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Thanks for clearing that up! I sort of thought you meant that your iMac was on a train today!

Was the iMac in your control while it was on the train...or did you ship it?

If it was out of your control...it could have been handled "roughly" or even dropped...and that could be the source of the problems.

- Nick

no it was actually under my control... it was sealed in a box but i don't know something might have happened from all the moving and stuff....

Out of curiousity, what are you doing with VLC when this happens? Can you reproduce this consistently, or was this just a one time thing.

I would venture a guess that VLC is trying to initialize the screen and something may go awry. Are you attempting to play some form of media via a Firefox plugin? Your stacktrace would seem to suggest this.

i had the same problem on my iMac when i first bought it. returned it...got a new one...BAM! fixed. :-D

Either some kind software conflict or Open it up...and look for lose cables or take it in for repair$$$$. I would open it up.

As you have transported it recently it certainly seems likely that a cable could have become loose.
If you have the skill and patience open the back and see, but get a good picture of what it should look like first (google is your friend), so that you have a reference point.
Do fsck first though and see what happens. I suspect all will be ok, but you never know.

i really don't want to open it up!!! every time i open something up i m messing it up... not going to happen haha... so then i ll take it for service and see what happens
and i tried fcsk as well but i don't think it did anything, this is most likely to be a hardware problem...
and i don't thing that it is vlc cause last time that happened and i checked the log again there were totally other things from what i posted....

Ok, keep us posted. I can't see that VLC would cause everything to crash, it's fine for me, but it could be worth uninstalling it completely and downloading the latest version, just to be sure.

i just called to my city's mac service and they told me that this could be anything!!! and they told me to take it there and just for looking at it will cost me 50eu and if the motherboard is damaged or something would cost me 807!!! that's insane!!!

angelo9888 said:

i just called to my city's mac service and they told me that this could be anything!!! and they told me to take it there and just for looking at it will cost me 50eu and if the motherboard is damaged or something would cost me 807!!! that's insane!!!

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Yes...the response you got..."could be anything"...is pretty typical.

The repair guys don't have a "crystal ball" to be able to tell you exactly what the problem is. They need to look at it, connect it to test equipment, etc.

Regarding the cost. In most cases...almost any repair you get done professionally on a computer it going to cost BIG bucks (unless it's really something easy like a loose wire)...and even something like that will cost you alot more than you would think.

Because of high repair costs (parts & labor)...many of us either try to repair them ourselves...or "bite the bullet", and buy a new computer.

This is where the folks that like to purchase extended warranties win out!

Good luck...hopefully the problem will be something simple & inespensive to repair!

- Nick

And, they could tell you anything and you'd be none the wiser.
Good luck with it. Go on, take it apart, you know you want to really

hahaha!!! ok and even if i do... then what??? i don't know how to fix those things!!!

i have unplugged the keyboard and mouse and this thing hasn't happened ever since... now i plugged the keyboard and another mouse and still doesn't happen... is there any case that this might be keyboard or mouse problem?????

It would be a very weird coincidence if it were. I really don't see how it would affect the screen.
Stick with the new ones and see what happens in time, you never know.

the problem appeared again!! so no mouse or keyboard problem....

well i found this
iMac Software Update 1.3 (Leopard)

do you think that this might help at all?

Worth a try, can't hurt at all.

i just got it back today and they told me that it was the mainboard and that i should have it as a decoration from now on... (((

Major bummer.

I am having a problem with my monitor going black for about a second and then coming back on. Using Mac Mini. Thought monitor was going bad. Replaced it. Have just run disk utility as per thread. Now will switch from Firefox to Safari to see if the screen continues to go black occasionally. It seems that the frequency of going black has increased in the last few days.