video/display problem on MCP: vertical green lines

they don't run the length of the screen, they simply display themselves in many images, and on pretty much every video. the problem started up last night. i've tried booting in safe mode, updating the mac, clearing caches (although it's not unique to simply my browsers--nothing works so far.

any thoughts? i don't know if it's a graphics card issue, or a display issue (although i don't know why the bars wouldn't run all the way through the screen or just consistently in the same areas--it's as though it seems to have issues with specific colours & video.





any help/suggestions at all? it is all very appreciated, i'd really love to be able to avoid hundreds of dollars and weeks without having access to the machine i work on.

You say it is not running from the top to the bottom, so it can not be the screen, well it actually can, but you would have 1 semi faulty connection for the vertical line of pixels and then an additional faulty connection for every pixel that is acting up, which the longer the line is the less likely it is the screen.

I am thinking you have a faulty Video Card. Lines are related to the colors on the screen in that area, on certain colors the line will disappear. You did not mention which MacBook Pro you are using, there are many that have been known to have Video Card issues, if it is one of those then I would say that would be first guess.

It is also hard to diagnose something this strange without actually seeing it. I am not sure if you are near an apple store, if you are you can bring it in there and they can run a full test on everything in your computer. If you happen to have a mid/Late 2007 or Early 2008, this was a huge issue for them, they had extended the warranty to 4 years from purchase date. They also have a special test for this one, you have to mention to them you think it fails under the Nvidia video card issue that was know for this model, they will look that up and see this other test. At least this is how it is at the 2 by me.

rustyk123 said:

I am thinking you have a faulty Video Card. Lines are related to the colors on the screen in that area, on certain colors the line will disappear. You did not mention which MacBook Pro you are using, there are many that have been known to have Video Card issues, if it is one of those then I would say that would be first guess.

It is also hard to diagnose something this strange without actually seeing it. I am not sure if you are near an apple store, if you are you can bring it in there and they can run a full test on everything in your computer. If you happen to have a mid/Late 2007 or Early 2008, this was a huge issue for them, they had extended the warranty to 4 years from purchase date. They also have a special test for this one, you have to mention to them you think it fails under the Nvidia video card issue that was know for this model, they will look that up and see this other test. At least this is how it is at the 2 by me.

Click to expand...

The MCP is from early 2009--the first of the unibody versions. Do you know if video cards issues were common/extended warranties also covered those?

j.lippens said:

The MCP is from early 2009--the first of the unibody versions. Do you know if video cards issues were common/extended warranties also covered those?

Click to expand...

If it is a Late 2008 Unibody MacBook Pro, the first Unibody Series, I have heard they have issues with the video card, I have not actually seen one having the issues though. There is a early 2009 17" MacBook Pro, I have never seen one, but this is the first 17" Unibody. If it is classified as a Mid-2009, I can verify the have video card issues, we have one at my work that the 9400m card failed in it, I switched it to use the other card and we are all good again, at least for now.

If you want to try what I did, go into energy saver in system preferences, then in the top left corner, there is 2 radio buttons, just switch it to the other option, one is better Performance, the other i think is better battery life. If the line disappears then the issue is the video card. I am also not sure if all the pros have this option, it may just be the 17" and the Higher 15", I really can't remember the options back then.