Q: Strange vertical stripes - Continued

Another "me too" here
My MacBook Pro is 2 months old, and the vertical stripe started the first week.
It usually happens awakening the Mac, but once happened when starting the OS.
C'mon Apple - tell us something

I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. I was so upset when I first had this problem--and found this forum--but now I have trained myself--upon shutdown or sleep--to set the brightness to max (or near). When I boot or wake up, I just reduce brightness again. It's a pain, but has become so automatic that it's like logging in. The few times I forget, I ALWAYS get the stripes, but I NEVER get them when I remember this minor fix. Otherwise, the machine is brilliant, so I'm not so upset now. (Still angry at Apple, though, for not being more honest.)

Interesting. I didn't realize that would work. I wonder why having the brightness all the way up makes the problem not crop up?

Because I do know that if the stripes are there, turning the brightness up while they are there will not get rid of them.

Welcome to the "Strange Vertical Lines" club one and all!!
I have had this problem on and off since I bought my MBP in March. This has been a hot item on the Apple discussion board since March. Some 60,000 view until Apple closed the thread. Something they love to do when they aren't going to do a thing about it. APPLE is so busy with the iPhone that they are willing to ignore all of us who have paid $2500 plus and an issue that is now reaching incredible proportions. We all went through this when the iPod came out…remember?? It seems that Steve Jobs has taken is eye off the ball again and Apple computer customers are going to suffer. So here is the deal…complain all you want, take you computer back and exchange them, do all you can, because none of this will do the slightest bit of good… the stripes will come back, some time they will disappear for weeks at a time, but trusts me they will come back. And in the end the only thing you can count on, is that Apple will do nothing about fixing the problem! BUY A iPHONE IF YOU WANT APPLE’S ATTENTION!!!

Just finished reading this whole thread (as well as the original one) and wanted to add another "me too."

This issue just started happening to me on a 10-day-old MBP 15" 2.6GHz with a 9C82 screen. Based on my serial number, this machine was built week 28 (mid-July) of 2008. So the claims that this problem was based on a limited run of bad LCDs and that current production machines no longer have this issue appear to be false. Also it still isn't clear to me if this is purely a hardware defect as some suggest, since many earlier posts suggest that this has happened to multiple different LCD manufacturers (ie. 9C81, 9C82, 9C83 were all listed among those affected in the original thread). If it were purely due to an LCD hardware defect, wouldn't we expect to see it isolated to one manufacturer?

Based on all the comments, I am not convinced that replacing this MBP with another one will give any assurances that this will not happen again in the replacement.

Thoughts?

This looks like it is related:

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/08/08/nvidia.fault.in.macbooks/

This is unrelated. The problem in these threads is about a +backlight failure+. Even while the backlight is failing, all graphics work correctly and all GPU acceleration is functional.

haddonTJ wrote:

since many earlier posts suggest that this has happened to multiple different LCD manufacturers (ie. 9C81, 9C82, 9C83 were all listed among those affected in the original thread). If it were purely due to an LCD hardware defect, wouldn't we expect to see it isolated to one manufacturer?

Based on all the comments, I am not convinced that replacing this MBP with another one will give any assurances that this will not happen again in the replacement.

Thoughts?

I have yet to hear from anyone who has managed to get this issue resolved. Mine is still defective, and they aren't taking it back for repair anymore because they cannot guarantee that it will even be repaired. Others who have had repairs have gone as long as 3 weeks without the stripes, but eventually they came back.

As to the panel manufacturer, the backlight is separable from the LCD panel itself. It is unclear to me if these panel replacements are replacing the entire assembly, or just the screen itself. If the backlight isn't being replaced in these repairs, it's no wonder they are coming back defective. Anyway, from what I can gather, Apple is using one or two LED backlight manufacturers (and it would appear that they are primarily Kenmos backlights) regardless of the LCD panel.

If I were in your spot, I'd ask for my money back in full. Currently there is no reason to have hope that a repair will fix the problem.

I'll toss my 2 cents in as well. Bought a 15" MBP a little over a month ago, same issue as everyone else, at random intervals.

Hello vertical stripers, stripes here too - I have the early 2008 2.5GHz MBP. Noticed the problem after the return policy ended, and phoned Apple tech support. They seemed to know what it was about and asked me to send in the computer, I got pretty huffy about paying $2.7K for a laptop I couldn't use but that didn't help. Sent the computer in and it came back with the RAM chips in a separate bag and the LED driver exchanged. Apparently the chips are not authorized for use with Apple products: Other World Computing 4GB, CAS 4 low-latency. They didn't say definitively that's what caused it, but I did wonder how many of you on this discussion board have installed third party RAM & if so how many of you got the low-latency ones. I have no other bad-RAM symptoms though & the hardware check thinks the chips are OK. By the way, the stripes returned despite the new LED driver immediately after I put the RAM back and zapped the PRAM - I haven't tried to put the original RAM chips back in since I am away from my office right now, but I wanted to check to see what you other vertical stripers thought about this.

i got the stripes on my first MBP within 2 days from new. it was fitted with the original apple RAM.

i get the stripes on my 2nd MBP which has Crucial RAM fitted. i don't see RAM being the problem.

I doubt it's a RAM issue. Mine is out of the box from Apple and has the problem.

MaxxD,

Thanks for the reply, and for your many informative posts. Based on your description and what is being reported on the boards, I do suspect the problem is isolated to the LEDs and not the LCD panel itself. I was curious to hear what the outcome of your service ticket would be, and now see it was less than satisfying. Was there any official comment, or was it truly a "this is a known problem without a known fix, you are SOL"?

I find it curious that there are such discrepancies in service responses, from doing nothing to replacing LCDs to (more recently) sending updated LED drivers -- unfortunately all without a lasting solution.

I have been playing around with the vertical stripes issue, and while I can't replicate it consistently, more often than not I can exacerbate it via PhotoBooth. The interesting thing is that the LED lighting/outage pattern is not always consistent. It is always an alternating pattern at regular intervals, but sometimes the spacing between unlit LEDs is narrow (approx 1cm apart) and sometimes it is wider (~2cm apart). I think this would be strange for a purely hardware issue.

Agreed. This is definitely not a third party hardware conflict issue. Mine also occurred on a stock MBP 2.6GHz, 2GB RAM. I am guessing that the fact that you saw recurrence of the vertical stripes after you switched in the upgraded RAM is purely coincidence.

After two weeks.

The problem is still here on my MBP.

And no suggested fixes can fix it.

Argh.