Q: Strange vertical stripes

I have been following the posts on this closely and have posted myself. Recently I have been getting the stripes even on ac power after waking from sleep. Putting it back to sleep and waking it again clears it. So, it seems for me it is not just related to battery power.

I also have a brand new MacBook Pro, 2.5 GHz, all of 2 1/2 weeks old. It exhibited the same vertical stripes as shown in this picture (took one of my own). Like others reported in this chain the problem went away after closing cover, waiting for system to sleep, and waking it up again. At the time this happened I had just been using the system for normal meeting work, note taking, Powerpoint, Email, web browsing. No use of any other peripherals, special graphics, external devices, etc. I have Parallels installed but have not yet needed to fire it up (for which I am thankful).

Other questions / answers:

1. How often does it occur? Does it occur reliably?
Just started. During normal use. Cleared after sleep / wake cycle.

2. Does it resolve if you perform a specific action? What is this action?
Closed the lid for 45 seconds, waited for "sleep" light to flash, on reopening, it was ok

3. Does it always resolve by performing this action?
Too soon to tell, first time this weird thing happened.

4. Is the machine plugged into AC when the problem occurs?
Yes

5. Can you cause the problem to occur by performing an action?
Not clear.

6. Is your display glossy or matte?
Gloss

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

8. When did you purchase your computer?
June 23, 2008

9. Do you have a photograph of the defect? If so, please post a link.
Yes, not posted but EXACTLY like others on this thread.

1) Do you have any virtualization software installed (VMware, Parallels)?
Parallels, never used except as part of install checkout 2 1/2 weeks ago.

2) What brightness setting do you typically use for the display? (Full, 7/8th, etc.)
I think you may have something there. When I first got the MBP the brightness Full brightness, auto-adjust is ON

3) Under System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Options, what is your setting for:
Automatically reduce brightness of the display before display sleep (ON or OFF)
ON

4) Under System Preferences -> Display , what is your setting for:
Automatically adjust brightness as ambient light changes
ON

MBP 15" / 2.5 GHz / 4 GB RAM / 250 GB Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Hello,

I just wanted all to know what I am experiencing and find out if everyone/anyone has exactly the same experience:

I can recreate the problem ANYTIME I want by having the display set at the "Max -6 blocks" level of brightness, close the lid and let it fall asleep. Then open it and stripes are there. If the brightness is set at any other level, problem does not occur and I can't recreate it.
Now, why that happens of course I don't know but if someone can suggest their ideas, please do.

Meanwhile, if this problem doesn't get worse, I have a fix (at least for myself): never let the computer sleep or shut down with above mentioned brightness setting

Thank you.
Good luck.

After various weeks with my 3rd display, which is 9C83, I have never seen the stripes.

During these weeks, I have always set the screen intensity to max - 6 (and other values) before sleeping the notebook and the stripes have never shown up. With my 2nd monitor (first replacement), I had been able to replicate the stripes in a couple of attempts by using the same settings.

May be I will see the stripes again, anyway this screen looks "less affected" by the stripes issue.

I noticed that the display "awakes" in a different way from the previous two. In this case there is a noticeable lapse between pixels and backlighting turning on.

There are rumors about new MBPs being presented in the next weeks. Either this issue will be fixed soon after the new models (they will have some time to study it) or it will be simply forgotten. It is unbelievable Apple has not given a single official statement about this.

mac.cardi

I just go my Penryn MBP 3 days ago (7/15) and I noticed it right out of the box.

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/740/img3606ms5.jpg

I'll be making a trip to the Apple Store this weekend.

Bought my MBP on Friday the 13th of June.........................
And yes I got the vertical stripes about two or three weeks after I bought it. Didn't know what it was and restarted and problem was solved........or so I thought. About 3 days ago it happened again and now its's happening more often now. Bummer!!!!!!!!!!!!
The shift, ctrl, eject shortcut works which is nice until there is a SOLUTION!!!!!!!!! Apple can you hear me, here in the Netherlands looking for a SOLUTION as well!

Apples Support Article from July 17 2008

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1258

LOL

All this looong time to write those two lines? Without any further explanation?

Anyway, what does that article mean? Should we downgrade to 10.5.3 from 10.5.4?

mac.cardi

I have just rated this article as "not helpful". Press Control - Shift - Eject is not a real solution for this issue: if I go to a my customer to show a work, when I open the MBP he must be astonished from the work, not from the bug!

Agree

Following a suggestion from somebody in this community I changed my background from solid colour to a picture and this has stopped it (for now).

It would be nice if the "clever people" gave us some official indication of that they doing about it definitively.

Not sure if it will help, but I just rated that article "one star" to try to get Apple's attention that this needs a real fix, not a hack. I suggest other people do the same.

Just found this story on MacRumors:

The Inquirer speculates that all G84 and G86 graphics chips are affected by the GPU failures announced by NVIDIA earlier this month.

According to NVIDIA a significant quantity of NVIDIA chips have been failing at higher than normal rates but has not yet provided a breakdown of affected products.

The Inquirer believes that chips used in the G84 and G86 models of video cards are affected, despite NVIDIA's reassurances that only a small batch has been affected:
The short story is that all the G84 and G86 parts are bad. Period. No exceptions. All of them, mobile and desktop, use the exact same ASIC, so expect them to go south in inordinate numbers as well.

They do believe that notebooks are far more likely to be affected due to the constant powering up and down of their chips.

Apple's MacBook Pro currently uses the NVIDIA 8600M GT. This graphics chipset is amongst those listed by The Inquirer as affected. No official confirmation is yet available.

See it here:
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/07/21/macbook-pro-nvidia-chips-affected-too-by-fai lures/

Hey Steinway,

I had the stripes and then took the mbp back to apple and they refused to fix it because they could not reproduce the stripes.
Luckily, right before they returned it back to me, they go the stripes.

Now, it's been over 2 months without one incidence of stripes. I have read a lot threads of how to reproduce the stripes on command. I was fearful of trying any of these methods.

Today, I tried your method and lucky for me it did not work. My mbp is still stripes free.

Lesson for all, return you mbp to get it fixed. Don't assume it's a firmware problem. Assume it's hardware until convinced otherwise.

If tens of thousands people return their NEW mbp for repair, then Apple will finally try to fix this problem in earnest!

If you type" strange vertical stripes" into the search on the apple.com nothing comes up. You have to type it under the discussion search engine otherwise, apple is trying to keep it under wraps!

also, this thread is probably the most popular thread on the discussion board but it doesn't even make it on the "most popular discussion" list.

Apple, you are making billions....please fix this problem!

This is old news.

Just bought MBPro 15'' and after 1 week of using it - I have the same stripes... Apple article says that it affects only early 2008 models - this is clearly not true!