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Strange vertical stripes

Argh, I wish I'd taken a picture of the problem--it hasn't happened since Friday, but every so often, when I wake the MBP (Penryn) from sleep, I see alternating bands of light and dark vertical "stripes" along the screen. It looks as if half the LED backlights did not activate.

However, if I shut the lid and then re-open, it goes away. What gives? Is this a hardware or software fault?

If it happens again, I'll be sure to take a photo. This is ridiculous.

15" MBP (Penryn), Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Mar 2, 2008 3:47 PM

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687 replies

Nov 19, 2018 12:05 PM in response to atomic wedgie

I am having this same issue with my new MultiTouch MacBook Pro 15" 250GB, I got it in the beginning of March and already has a stuck blue pixel and this oddly vertical stripes. It's a shame that I've paid US$ 2700,00 for this computer and having so much trouble with the screen. What does Apple has to saying about that?

Mar 2, 2008 8:57 PM in response to atomic wedgie

I have one of the fancy new MacBook Pros too, and I think I just had the same thing happen tonight. Everything was working fine until I unplugged my MBP from the power supply, at which point it seemed like half of the display backlights turned off.

I didn't think to close and reopen the lid, so I wasn't able to fix it without rebooting. Nothing else I tried (fiddling with the display and keyboard lighting options) seemed to make any difference.

I did have the foresight to take a picture of the problem--is this what you are seeing?

http://img175.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mg2729smallnx2.jpg

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

Thanks for any help that any of you might be able to provide!

Mar 2, 2008 9:12 PM in response to atomic wedgie

Great--at least I know I have some company! :-/ This has only happened once so far, so it's not critical as of yet...but since the machine is less than a week old, this does cause me to raise an eyebrow. If it happens again, I'm going to trek off to the Apple store to see what can be done.

If you do happen to take yours in to get it looked at, please post back here and let us know what happened!

Mar 3, 2008 11:38 PM in response to Dennis Quant

If you notice these stripes, please try to answer the following questions, so that we might be able to pinpoint the problem:

1. How often does it occur? Does it occur reliably?
2. Does it resolve if you perform a specific action? What is this action?
3. Does it always resolve by performing this action?
4. Is the machine plugged into AC when the problem occurs?
5. Can you cause the problem to occur by performing an action?
6. Is your display glossy or matte?
7. What type of video graphics hardware does your machine have? How much VRAM?
8. When did you purchase your computer?
9. Do you have a photograph of the defect? If so, please post a link.

I know that's detailed, but I want to cover as much ground as possible, and provide as uniform a set of responses as we can get. If anyone else thinks of another question that would be useful to add to the above, please feel free to do so. Thanks!

Mar 4, 2008 9:10 AM in response to atomic wedgie

I was at an Apple Service Centre recently and saw the tech guy reproduce a similar fault by moving the screen(lid) back and forward slightly while the system was switched on, there on the left hand side of the screen were a band of blue, green, red and black lines running top to bottom on the screen, he moved the screen slightly backwards and they disappeared.

Not sure if this is the same issue you are experiencing but it might give you some idea

Mar 4, 2008 11:10 AM in response to atomic wedgie

All,

So, this just happened to me again for the second time. For me, it definitely seems to be related to power transitions. In both times where this happened, I unplugged the laptop and reconnected it to the power adapter, and then the weird half-backlighting appeared.

I was on a call when it happened this time, so I didn't have any time to play with the screen to make the backlighting issue go away...but it seemed to resolve itself on its own after about 45 minutes, right after I hung up on my Internet phone call.

The computer was functioning normally after that, but when I then disconnected the power and reconnected, all of the backlighting suddenly went off. From that point, the only way to make it get better was to close and reopen the lid.

The symptoms I am talking about are strictly related to the backlighting (as shown in the image I posted before). I think the issue that necronym mentioned is something different--that sounds like a problem with the graphics card and/or display itself and is presumably different from the backlight issue.

Atomic wedgie, as the original poster, do you know if you have any option to rename this thread? This might be easier topic for people to find if "backlight" were in the thread name, as well as a reference to the latest Penryn MBPs.

For reference, I have one of the new Penryn MBPs, 15" matte screen, purchased 2/27. NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT, 256 MB VRAM.

-SD

Mar 4, 2008 11:13 AM in response to essd

Oh, and for reference, when I wrote that "all of the backlighting went off" in that second instance, I mean that:

1) the screen first developed the "half-backlight" problem (where only half of the LEDs seemed to be on)
2) the problem resolved itself with no action after about 45 min (back to full backlight)
3) I decided to unplug the computer and reconnect it
4) when power was reconnected, ALL of the backlighting was off. This means that the entire screen was dark (although I could still faintly see my applications and use the computer by putting my face right next to the screen).

Mar 4, 2008 6:45 PM in response to atomic wedgie

My 2.4 base model penyrn MacBook Pro matte screen purchased 2/27/08 has now had four episodes of the vertical stripes. It happens when the power adapter is unplugged, and strangely every other night since I bought it. I cannot reproduce it. It does last until I put the computer to sleep, or it goes to sleep on its own. I let it go on for about twenty-five minutes this time.

It looks similar to the picture posted by essd, but not quite as dark. The third episode had twice as many stripes as the other episodes.

I hope this will be helpful and we can get this resolved. I really like the machine. I have photos but no way of posting one for this forum.

Strange vertical stripes

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