Q: Strange vertical stripes - Continued

I have experienced this problem but what caused it I have never heard of before. Last night I was on power, with the usual full brightness and my wife turned the room light on. Then bang, the screen dimmed and produced the stripes. Weird. Did the SHIFT + CONTROL to reset the display to fix it.

I got the same problem (Strange vertical stripes). Now I am just waiting to hear about a solution - Apple, where are you?????

Please add me to the extensive list........
This irritating problem occurs sporadically.
Exactly as images posted on this thread.

Thank you Apple.

My journey started out last Friday, when i experienced Banding on my early 08 Macbook Pro. I booked an appointment for the next day. I take it in and show them the banding issues and they took it in for repairs.

After 4 days waiting for a replacement screen to come in, i get a call yesterday to pick it up.

I go today to pickup up my laptop and i test it out in the store. I noticed that the back light on the screen was not working. So they took it in again, and i was really frustrated at not having a laptop for a week because i really needed it for school. I remained calm and talked nicely to the employee.

I get a call about 30 minutes ago saying that they could not fix the issue. They tried replacing the screen again, logic board etc. Nothing fixed the issue.

AND THEY ARE REPLACING IT WITH A UNIBODY MACBOOK PRO.

I am going to pick it up tomorrow morning as they are doing data migration to the new laptop.

I LOVE YOU APPLE

I just took delivery of a previous-gen MBP, mostly because I really prefer native FW400 ports to 800/400 adapters, cables and hubs. While it's generally been fine so far, I've noticed a number of oddball display issues in the week I've had it:

- The strange vertical stripes of this thread (appeared on battery while web-browsing with very conservative performance settings and low internal temperature). Sleep restored the display to normal.

- an odd crash, with a segmented re-start I'd never seen before (no progress bar, just a horizontal segment ladder). After progress bar completed it's crawl, top half of the screen was partially filled with random garbage. Restart fixed it.

While these issues are intermittent and seem resolvable, I use the MBP for "critical" work outside the studio. I can't tell if this is a hardware or software issue, but it makes me not trust this machine.

Should I be hitting the Apple Store for a hardware solution (I don't really want to be without a machine for a week, especially if they're just doing voodoo dances and random hardware exchanges to fix an unrelated software issue)?

Help!

Yet another me too. But we have a G5, not MBP - haven't seen anyone else like this so far?

Tried fixes listed above, not working....

Same Problem here. Early 2008 $2000 MBP 6 months old, now getting vertical stripe banding daily, a few times a day. Reported problem to AppleCare yesterday. Obviously still under warranty but I also purchased AppleCare extended service plan as I'm beginning to think there is a serious design flaw in the product. I ended up speaking with customer relations as well as the "product specialists" a few of them actually. My MBP is going in for replacement of both the screen and the logic board next week. However I've been following this thread for a while now and I have some doubt that the repair will be effective. As noted above by several posters, the repair work doesn't solve the problem in many cases.

However this is an intolerable situation and must pursue this until I am thoroughly satisfied and the problem is either fixed or fully compensated.
So I must go through the repair process and hope it solves the problem. If it doesn't I will be demanding a new replacement.
I cannot believe how widespread this problem appears to be and seemingly without effective repair, going by the posts in this thread.

I would like to hear from those of you who have actually had their repair work for this problem permanently solve this particular problem.

$2000?.....Unacceptable and disappointing.

Hi,

I have the same era MBP as you. First I got the lid/display replaced then, the logic board. I have had one episode of 'display failing to awaken' since. No 'stripes'. I (very fortunately) have a local Apple store, which has been top notch. Because of the local service, turn-around was quick on the repairs.
No $$$ out of pocket. I have Applecare.
I wasn't prepared for the re-configuring of my home network after the logic board repair. I didn't know repaired unit would be recognized as a new computer. Once explained to me (and after a time capsule 'wipe'), I was able to resume my backups.

GoodLuck,

JMK

Did they run you through a PRAM reset?.

Thank You JMK, This is good information. It seems that replacing either the entire lid and logic board or replacing the backlight, screen and logic board has a higher success rate than just the replacement of display and logic board.
Thanks Again
david3

I bought a MBP in Feb of last year right after they came out. It started showing the stripes about a week after I got. It only happened once but I took it to a Mac repair place cause it freaked me out a bit. Of course they couldnt find anything wrong with it or get it to show the stripes. They sent me home with my MBP and basically said I was crazy. The problem seemed to go away and everything worked fine until June when it happened again. I took it back to the Mac shop and they still couldnt find anything. The problem disappeared again for a few more months and then about a month ago in December it started back. Over the last two weeks its been occuring almost every day and usually happens when I turn the machine on or it comes out of sleep. I finally couldnt take it anymore so I decided to look online to see if its been happening to other MBP owners. I was quite amazed when I found that there was a lot of info online about this. I finally feel like Im not crazy.

I took my machine back to the Mac repair shop this afternoon and they finally acknowledged that this is a real problem. They said they have been getting a lot of people come in with early 2008 MBPs that have the vertical stripe issue. They are going to replace my logic board and Im hoping it will solve the problem.

I've been trying to post on the original board for a while, but it has been locked. I bought my MacBook Pro in May of 2008, so it had the LED Backlight. After 2 or 3 weeks of owning the Mac, I got the vertical stripes. Ever since then They always seem to pop-up at least twice a week. It seems to happen if i let the battery run down overnight, then plug it in and turn it on. Or if I have it plugged in and I put it to sleep for a while and unplug it. Apple needs to do something. Tomorrow i'm going to try to take it to the Apple Store and show them this as its happening.

I have exactly the same problem with my MBP bought last April. The stripes have appeared every day 2 weeks after I got my machine, and during 2 weeks appeared every day.

Then the stripes never occured during 6 months ! And reapperead exactly on December, 28 (I noted it). So what did I do before this ? Something unusual for me : 5 days before I have plugged an external display to my machine, as I was testing at a friend's home the use of MBP with the shell closed and external keyboard/mouse/display.

I now remember that when I got my MBP I had still an old lcd screen, that I've plugged one time just to verify that all was ok.

I must say that in december the stripes have occured every day during 3-4 days, then disappeared again from beginning of January, 2009. Actually I can't reproduce it, even using Photobooth and setting the light from 6 boxes of max...

For me the use of an external display could be an explanation of the problem. Fortunately I don't usually use an external display.

Dave, that horizontal segment ladder is what happens when the MacBook Pros (or any laptop under Leopard, AFAIK) comes out of sleep. Apple now uses a hibernation mode in which the contents of the RAM are written to the hard drive, then read in on wake. It takes a pretty long time, the screen looks ghost-like, and there is that horizontal ladder. If you want to return to instant sleep and wake up, you can use SmartSleep, which also lets you set the power level at which hibernation occurs.

It's a separate issue (not a problem) from the vertical stripes.

Hey, everyone else, in general, didn't Apple just release a statement that they will repair all the early MacBook Pros with the Nvidia graphics chip in question if you're having the vertical stripes problem? At least, I thought I read that and bookmarked that!

I've had the problem, but only a couple of times, not reproducible, so I'm not acting on it. If I lived closer to an Apple store I might make it happen so I could show them and get some instant repair/replacement work going!

Is this the repair that you are talking about?

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377

Obviously, that's not the vertical stripe issue that many of us are having. But if there is a repair program out there for this, please do let us know!!