Q: Strange vertical stripes

... stripes have returned...

I saw these stripes only once since I've owned my 2.5 GHz MBP (bought at the end of March 2008), which frightened me enough to search out this support thread. I've since turned off the "Automatically adjust brightness…" setting in the System Prefs and have never seen the stripes since (whether on battery or on AC power).

If it helps any, my display is model 9C81 (which, I think, makes it an LG panel).

I recently bought a 15" Macbook Pro which has also started showing the banding. It seems to be fine on boot up, the fault only appears intermittently and usually after waking from sleep mode.

I'm not sure when it started as I initially had the screen on full brightness, where its a lot less noticeable. However I have now started to turn down the screen brightness to conserve battery power and this is probably when I started to notice it.

I was hoping it was just mine with this problem, its not good to see its such a common fault

It looks like I've a lot of reading to do in this thread, before returning to the apple store.

I thought Apple was supposed to have a great build quality but I'm not having a good entry into the Apple World. I also bought a 20" iMac last August when the Aluminum iMac launched and that also has a less than satisfactory display.

Hello All.

This will be my first post here and I suppose it is simply another "me too".

This recently happened to me upon startup, but it was not as defined as the other photo shown on page 1. I have a photo of it, but fotki keeps changing the location of the photo, so the link breaks.

Anyway, I typically keep my 15MBP 512GT glossy plugged in. Last night the cord was removed after the power was off. Today before I turned it on, I reconnected the magna-cord and booted up. I noticed the zebra stripes immediately. Similar to others I immediately searched and found this thread.

Closing the lid for about 10 seconds and reopening it did solve the problem. My new toy is just over three weeks old and today is the first time this has happened.

Hopefully it won't happen again, but if so, I certainly hope there is a formal fix that can be applied via software. I really hope it's not a hardware issue...

Hmm...
Now that I think about it, last night was the first time I put the DVD drive to actual use.
After watching the Twin Peaks Pilot episode (about 2 hours) I perused the internet for another hour and a half or so. I then shut down and removed the power cord.

The point of this post is to say that the first time I saw this happen on my machine was the next boot up after the first substantial run of the DVD player.

It may mean nothing at all, but I thought I would comment in the event that something similar triggered the striping on someone else's...

I went to the apple store at lunch time to talk to one of the Geniuses. Interesting enough, I haven't seen the stripes since last Sunday when I saw them for the first time. Of course, they didn't appear today.
What the Genius did though, was to assume that that was probably an issue with the power management. He was confident that an update was going to be available any time soon if it is a problem that affects a lot of computers. Additionally, he performed a reset of the power management. He took the battery off the computer. Then pressed and held the on/off button for a couple of seconds. Then plugged the magsafe (it took a couple of seconds for the green light to show up), then he started the computer. According to him, this would had fixed any power issue that was software related.
I haven't seen any stripes, but again, my computer was off the whole afternoon.
We'll see what happens.
Good luck everybody!
Oh, and the option of replacing the computer was of course always there, but he wanted to try to see if this one would work fine just after what he did.

I've had this too, on a brand new MB Pro, received last week. It's only appeared a couple of times - the first after setting up Parallels, and the second after waking from sleep.

1. How often does it occur? Does it occur reliably?
So far, once, and it occurred off of power.

2. Does it resolve if you perform a specific action? What is this action?
Taking the laptop off of power appeared to cause it.

3. Does it always resolve by performing this action?
Reboot resolved it, didn't try any of the other suggestions in this post.

4. Is the machine plugged into AC when the problem occurs?
Nope, it occurs as the machine is unplugged.

5. Can you cause the problem to occur by performing an action?
It appeared to happen when the battery was 100% charged.

6. Is your display glossy or matte?
Matte

7. What type of video graphics hardware does your machine have? How much VRAM?
GeForce 8600 GT, 512MB VRAM

8. When did you purchase your computer?
March 18, 2008

9. Do you have a photograph of the defect? If so, please post a link.
No, but other photographs in this thread match mine exactly. Stripes from the bottom of the screen.

1. How often does it occur? Does it occur reliably?
Twice now , both at random times. Nothing in common at all.

2. Does it resolve if you perform a specific action? What is this action?
First time movement set it off , second time heat possibly. Just been playing a game.

3. Does it always resolve by performing this action?
Sleeping my macbook pro solved this , as did using a widget to turn the screen off.

4. Is the machine plugged into AC when the problem occurs?
No

5. Can you cause the problem to occur by performing an action?
INope

6. Is your display glossy or matte?
Matte

7. What type of video graphics hardware does your machine have? How much VRAM?
GeForce 8600 GT, 256MB VRAM

8. When did you purchase your computer?
The day that the perryn chips came out.

9. Do you have a photograph of the defect? If so, please post a link.
Yep, Only from the second time though. But I can't get them to upload after 50 mins of trying

Just want to add "Me too." to the list. Mine happens when unplugging the ac adapter and is solved via putting the computer to sleep or some other means of resetting the display.

me too!!!!! same thing happened to me

I bought my MBP in NY. I took it back to my country and it happened after the MBP woke up from the sleep mode on the very first time I used it.

Too bad for a $2000 Apple product. Really really bad.

I just want to be added to this post to say I'm one more

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro4,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP41.00C1.B00
SMC Version: 1.27f1
Sudden Motion Sensor: State: Enabled

4 day old MBP. had the stripes twice now.


ctrlshifteject to restart the screen fixes it in the short term. i could take it back, but very much doubt a new one would be any better.
i just returned 3 macbooks for faults, so could live without the hassle.

apple, sort it out!

*Digg It!!!*

http://digg.com/apple/Appleignoring_display_problems_on_latest_MacBook_Pro2008

Just dugg the story. I hope it makes front page soon so it will get some air time on diggnation.