small 1-2 inch horizontal lines in screen

[loki86]

I have a macbook pro 13 5_5... she's a bit older but she's a trooper. Recently I've been getting small lines about 1-2 inches long appearing in the middle of the left side of the screen. These lines are in a full column from the top to the bottom of screen and range in intensity. Either I'm about to work around them or it's a solid pillar. I know it's the not graphics, external displays work fine and the issue seems to go away periodically. It even resets it's misery if I close the lid for half a second and open it back up.
I feel like it's heat related as when I'm at my SO's apartment I rarely if ever experience the problem (it's freezing in there) and that it's related to the cable.
Any help is appreciated... I do have a spare cable to try but I want further opinions before I start disassembling my screen assembly... and kind scared to do it, too broke to pay for it.

 

[loki86]

Yosemite

Apparently it was firmware related... before tearing apart my screen I decided to play around with the Yosemite Beta.... after installing it and running it on an external drive I haven't seen the lines... even after switching back over to my internal with Mavericks. Score one for procrastination and curiosity. Yosemite looks wonderful

 

[pigoo3]

That sounds like a great solution. So you think that it was the Yosemite beta that was causing the problem?

- Nick

 

[loki86]

Firmware

I just assumed the issue was related to heat *see first post* as external displays worked just fine etc. And I actually believe the Beta fixed the problem by upgrading my firmware during installation, an upgrade I could find nothing for with mavericks. Since installing and running Yosemite on an external drive and switching back to my internal Mavericks install I haven't seen a single flaw in my display.
Granted, this is only an assumption... for all I know it could just be a highly unlikely coincidence that my display started working properly after the install.

 

[loki86]

Coincidence

Turns out it was nothing more than a coincidence... the lines are slowly starting to come back and columned out on me once this morning... I have no choice but to assume the cable is going bad.... Time for surgery... wish me luck.

 

[pigoo3]

Too bad. The video cable is what I would have investigated next as well. A semi-common problem with laptops.

Good luck,

- Nick

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I have a macbook pro 13 5_5... she's a bit older but she's a trooper. Recently I've been getting small lines about 1-2 inches long appearing in the middle of the left side of the screen.

This is a known problem with certain Macbook Pros. I've heard from a bunch of folks reporting similar symptoms. Sorry to have to tell you that it's likely a bad AMD video card that Apple won't take responsibility for:
Owners of Early 2011 MacBook Pro Reporting Sporadic GPU Failures | MacTrast

There is a free utility:

gfxCardStatus (free)
https://gfx.io/

that lets you manually set whether the integrated graphics or the discreet graphics are used. If you find the problem exists when using the discreet graphics, and not when using the integrated graphics, you have found the culprit.

In any case, you should take your Mac to an Apple Store and have them have a look at it. They can diagnose a problem with the video card in seconds. Unfortunately it will cost upwards of $500 to fix this problem if it is the video card.

 

[loki86]

This particular macbook should be mid 2009, if I'm not mistaken. It's a 13inch 5_5 and the utility linked tells me I don't have integrated video. "Does not have dual video"

 

[Randy B. Singer]

This particular macbook should be mid 2009, if I'm not mistaken. It's a 13inch 5_5 and the utility linked tells me I don't have integrated video. "Does not have dual video"

Hmmm...might simply be a bad video cable.

See:

Trying to fix a MacBook Pro with a screen problem

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3819112?start=0&tstart=0

 

[loki86]

Awesome. Thank you for the links, appreciate the effort. I'm going to take the plunge in a couple days. I'll post how it goes

 

[loki86]

Bravery

So before I started melting and cutting things apart I got a little brave and gave my monitor a bit of a hard twist from the corner... I'm still not sure if it was the cable but now I think it could have been the screen itself. After I twisting it in the directing I thought it needed to it must have reseated something or re connected some traces, IDK but I'm working on a week now without consequence...
I may still end up replacing the screen if I don't just decide to buy a new book.

Thank you all again for your help. Salute