Hello,
One of our older machines has started acting strangely: I've seen green 'clutter' appear on the desktop, followed by the machine locking up as soon as you do something like closing a window. Sometimes the screen fails a quarter at a time, filling each quadrant with 'static' before locking up.
I think it's related to the video hardware. Operations like bringing up the dock or closing a window seem to cause the failure. The graphics chipset is NVIDIA GeForce 320M - which as far as I know has NEVER offered a driver update under OSX.
I tried various startup key combinations, e.g. to reset the NVRAM. When started in safe mode, the MacBook is fine, and never exhibits the video failure... although it runs a bit sluggishly. (I assume this is normal?) But if a machine works OK in safe mode, doesn't that indicate a software problem rather than a hardware one?
The machine is a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Faults have appeared shortly after the machine was cracked open for the first time (I had a store put in a new HDD and max the RAM). The machine has also spontaneously started reporting Battery Not Charging Condition: Replace Now - although there was no warning of a decline in the battery's health before this happened.
So I'm wondering: has my Apple retailer botched the upgrade and stressed some cables, leading to these failures... or are these just symptoms of old age? (Because I'm not wanting to spend further money on a laptop's battery if it's on its way out anyway.)
Anyway, all thoughts appreciated!
One of our older machines has started acting strangely: I've seen green 'clutter' appear on the desktop, followed by the machine locking up as soon as you do something like closing a window. Sometimes the screen fails a quarter at a time, filling each quadrant with 'static' before locking up.
I think it's related to the video hardware. Operations like bringing up the dock or closing a window seem to cause the failure. The graphics chipset is NVIDIA GeForce 320M - which as far as I know has NEVER offered a driver update under OSX.
I tried various startup key combinations, e.g. to reset the NVRAM. When started in safe mode, the MacBook is fine, and never exhibits the video failure... although it runs a bit sluggishly. (I assume this is normal?) But if a machine works OK in safe mode, doesn't that indicate a software problem rather than a hardware one?
The machine is a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo. Faults have appeared shortly after the machine was cracked open for the first time (I had a store put in a new HDD and max the RAM). The machine has also spontaneously started reporting Battery Not Charging Condition: Replace Now - although there was no warning of a decline in the battery's health before this happened.
So I'm wondering: has my Apple retailer botched the upgrade and stressed some cables, leading to these failures... or are these just symptoms of old age? (Because I'm not wanting to spend further money on a laptop's battery if it's on its way out anyway.)
Anyway, all thoughts appreciated!