Macbook Pro 17" 2009 display glitches regardless of GPU. Help?

The display has started having a lot of color distortion and artifacts. Here is a picture to illustrate some of them:



I tried switching between the 9400M and the 9600GT GPU but it has no effect on this. I also tried turning it off and rebooting.

I tried booting in Windows 7 and the problem is there.

At the OS selection screen, the problem is also apparent.

This happens even after if the computer was turned off for the night and cool to the touch.

It showed all of a sudden last night and it does not disappear.

This is a 17" Macbook Pro 2.8Ghz C2D 9400m/9600gt last generation. Purchased in October 2009. It's 19 months old.

I don't have a minidisplay port adapter so I can't test it on an external screen yet.

Any ideas on how to diagnose this further? Has anyone ever heard of such a problem even? You'd think even if one GPU fried, the other would carry on. Do they share VRAM? Could the VRAM be bad?

Thank you for your time.

It's definitely hardware. The display itself rather than the GPU is the more obvious culprit.

Yep, looks to be the monitor itself.

Take a screen shot. Typically, if the screen shot is ok, it's a display problem. If the screen shot shows what you see, then it would be GPU related.

If you've got Applecare, it's time to give them a call.

bobtomay said:

Yep, looks to be the monitor itself.

Take a screen shot. Typically, if the screen shot is ok, it's a display problem. If the screen shot shows what you see, then it would be GPU related.

Click to expand...

The screenshot looks fine.

And, thanks to you, I decided to slam the mac against my desk and the problem went away. I must've bumped it against a car door or something yesterday to cause the problem (obviously a displaced video ribbon, in hindsight).

You're the man.