Q: display anomalies

m.grem, I'm sorry to hear that you have these issues as well. I think it would be great if you raised some awareness on Facebook. Since not everybody affected by this bug will raise their voice we need everyone informed so we get enough voices to be heard. That's why I emailed all the user groups. They can be found here:

http://www.apple.com/usergroups/find/

Good luck!

@m grem: sorry to hear you too have had this disappointing experience. my machine finally died almost three years to the day after I had spend $2500 on it!!! (it was a 17in with 7200rpm hardrive)
needless to say i'm pretty outraged and thoroughly disgusted by Apple's lack of acknowledgment of this OBVIOUS design flaw.
on a side note: I also had a battery that swelled and split, and had to replace the power supply brick twice because of burned cords. my "SuperDrive" also ceased to be able to write DVD's after two years - altho I was able to restore that capability for the most part by cleaning the lens using the windex on a microfibre cloth wrapped around a credit card trick - check google for complete instructions... or PM me if you need to.
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all these people with EXACTLY the same issues, all appearing at almost EXACTLY the same time (90% between 2 and 3 years with a few appearing even before then), well YOU tell ME if that's a COINCIDENCE... I think not.
unfortunately all the legal strategies have so far produced ZERO results, neither of the two firms which expressed interest in this issue appear to have actually done anything at all in the way of investigation or legal claims...
now that my machine has finally given up the ghost, I am sorry to say that Apple has (perhaps permanently) lost me as a customer. my girlfriends 5 year old Dell still works flawlessly and as unsexy and clunky and crappy Windows is, I just refuse to pay more money to a company which has served its customers so poorly.
maybe i'll load Linux on my new Toshiba laptop.
either way - its nice to be able to watch full length movies on Hulu anytime I want for as longs as I want, not to mention being able to work in Photoshop without fear of freezing.
that's my $.02
good luck,
bennett

P.S. my previous post will most likely not survive so i encourage everyone to subscribe to this thread so you don't miss anything.
b

I had my logic board replaced in Sept 09 and I'm already getting the triangles and lines again. Was hoping the new logic board would at least last me a year. So much for SMC fan control and a cooling board. Ugh

didn't you get a 90 day warrantee??

I should just shut up, but I have had a couple of days to dwell over my phone call to Apple. Again it is hard to believe Apple does not acknowledge this issue at all. During my phone call, I kept going over the same things with the Rep with different points of logic and justification and to no avail was I even close to finding any resolve. It all comes down to numbers and who is willing to take responsibility for the design or chip flaw. The rep wanted to help me and I felt genuinely concerned for the cause, but after being put on hold a new justification was given as to why they can't help me.

My true impression was, that if I had several issues all along, like (cybermophs) post points out, all along, I would probably be sitting in front of a repaired or even brand new MBP at no cost. Now after 2.5 to 3 years, if your machine just fails or starts to fail, you have no recourse. No matter how many complaints are made.

I pressed them hard to review their policy regarding these Notebooks and I hope they do, but as some of you have been pointing out, with time this is just going away due to the age and time of our computers expected life.

While typing this, I just received the message from the last post referring to a replaced MB. Again I brought this issue up to the Apple rep and I am really sorry to say that the position suggested to me by the Rep, is if I can reproduce the same graphical error within the 90 days, they will review their take on my issue. The Depot program is good, but not if you are paying for the same design flaw. My only logic to this is it just must be more cost effective for Apple to just handle this issue as a case by case problem...

It just is not going to happen, the very fact Apple does not recognize the problem is amazing, especially with the amount of attention this is starting to receive.

Well we will see how this works out over time but I really hope they take care of the problem. The bottom line is the chips inside of these computers were never really meant to run at these high temps and looking at the fact the ATI was underclocked, is a true testament to this. So as I can only really see as an issue was when my computer was originally purchased in 2006, the Nvidia should have been the choice. Also as a side note there has been several reports of to much or misapplied thermal compound, but again this is just not recognized.

Well once again I have rambled on too long, but in closing I guess we should ask ourselves one question, should these computers just stop working after 2,3 or even 4 years, if they are not abused in any way.

I love you Apple but right now I am thinking, HMMMMMMMM wow. Jack

Just to add to the documentation of this problem. I am having the same issues with MBP purchased December 2006. Horizontal lines and other distortions, frequent system freezes. I am using smcFanControl and that helps a little -- but only a little!

I reported the problem to Apple.

MY MBP is bought April, 2007. Always worked fine, until recently, a couple of months ago, I began having graphic abnormalities. I made some screenshots here:
http://i49.tinypic.com/2up8z2p.png

http://i48.tinypic.com/23w4fiw.png

http://i49.tinypic.com/14kk3o7.png
I don't have lines or weird colors, just these dots which become really bad if I scroll or replace a window.

I've run hardware test by TechTool and it reported no problems.

I am running Fan Control, GPU temp is almost never higher than 50 Centigrade, but the fan speed is almost never lower now than 2200 rpm. So I suppose it's not a heat problem.

I'll try to do as suggested here: http://superuser.com/questions/73518/ati-x1600-driver-problem-on-mac, hopefully the laptop won't crash.

In July 2009 my battery literally exploded in exactly the same way as some people wrote in this thread. I bought a new one for €140 and now it works OK, but never lasts 4 hours.

MacBook Pro 1×2.16GHz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.5.8, ATI Radeon X1600 (256MB), Dual-monitor (probably increases the GPU temp)

My computer also used to show horizontal-line glitches on various windows (eg. firefox windows), and hard-freeze once a day, immediately after waking from the ScreenSaver.

The permanent solution (for me) was using the free & Excellent "Fan Control" SysPref – simply increase the "Base Speed" (for me, from 1500rpm to 2000rpm) and I also reduce the "Upper Threshold" to 70°C – thus the fans will work harder to keep temps down should they rise. (Also lower Threshold = 47°C).

I coupled that with "iStat Menus" (I think it's ShareWare) to monitor CPU & GPU temp (obviously GPU is more important here).
As long as my GPU temps is around or below 48°, no line glitches, and no freezes!

I like this solution because, in theory, it will always makes sure the temp stays below the crash-point (with tweaking of the fan-rpm vs. CPU-Temp settings). I suppose One can assume that CPU temp and GPU temp are correlated – they are in the same aluminum box.
At 2000rpm, the fans are still barely audible (at least in my office with 3 PC's running their loud fans). If I ever see the temp rise too much, I'll simply increase the fan-speed/cpu-temp slope again. I'd rather a loud usable computer than a quiet dead one!


My computer used to freeze once a day (coupled with graphic glitches)- that has not happened ever since implementing these fixes (almost 2 weeks ago). Of course my fans occasionally run louder - maybe half the time they are audible (around 4500 rpm each), while the computer used to be totally silent.

Also, a little clarification on "Fan Control" for anyone who needs it:
The way to use "Fan Control" is to basically make the slope of the graph steeper.
Also, look at the crosshair, and make sure that whatever you adjust makes it go UP (higher fan speed) – I found myself sometimes accidentally lowering the fan speed while making the slope steeper.

Thanks to everyone who posted their thoughts, it was very helpful in tracking down this elusive problem!

Screenshots here:
[Fan Control & iStat Menu monitoring][1]
[iStat Menu Setup][2]

[1]: http://www.ocpn.ece.ucsb.edu/index.php/publications/category/51-demis?download=9 56%3Afan-control-a-istat-menus-cpu-gpu-temp
[2]: http://www.ocpn.ece.ucsb.edu/index.php/publications/category/51-demis?download=9 57%3Aistat-menus-cpu-a-gpu-setup
[3]: http://superuser.com/questions/73518/ati-x1600-driver-problem-on-mac

Can you give some more details of how you fixed your thermal paste?
I assume I need to find a take-apart guide. It won't damage the GPU to remove the heatsink (I used to have a G5 - with open-faced CPUs!)? What paste did you reapply?
Thanks.

GanjoManjo, there's an excellent disassemble guide on ifixit.com in the Repair section.

When you take the heatsink off (actually you will be taking the logic board off the heatsink), just remove the thermal paste from both the heatsink and the CPU, GPU and the logic board chipset. The thermal compound will be completely solid and pretty hard (stiff) by now. Clean it all then with a bit of some strong alcohol or cologne, and then reapply the new thermal compound.

Don't apply too much of the paste, but be sure that it spreads nicely and there will be no gaps.

I've tried several solutions at this point, going from silver based paste (~5$ for a tiny amount) to the cheapest available white silicon grease (1$ for a big tube). They pretty much make no difference in my MBP.


Buy a can of compressed air, it should cost around 5-8 bucks, and blow through the heatsink's copper ribs to remove any dirt from there. There's always dirt there. Last time I was checking mine was barely a few weeks ago and yesterday almost 20% was covered with all kind of dust in my MBP.


By the way I'd recommend you set the base speed in FanControl to maximum, 3500rpm. Apart from that we're running pretty much the same settings there.

Apple surely knows of the issue but has decided to ignore it as it would be a severe financial hit to replace/repair the numbers of defective units.

The enthusiasm to fix a hardware problem holds a direct relation to the cost of fixing said item. Basically, they can't afford a recall because the number of units with this issue is way to high.

Obviously, you're well aware of this, but I thought I'd throw in some "me too!" sentiment.

Nice paradox: The more widespread a problem is, the less inclined a company is to acknowledge the fact that it is widespread. The less widespread a problem is, the more a company will (relatively speaking) welcome the chance to affordably demonstrate magnanimity. This suggests that recalls would tend to fall along a bell-curve with the smallest and greatest problems being ignored or denied respectively.

We should give this principle a name so devastatingly accurate that companies will be terrified to be busted in its name.

The Fuzzynormal Principle of Selective Integrity?

I will add that I got home the other night and noticed my macbook was having a strange shape to it. YUP you guessed it, once again the battery exploded. This is the second one.
Power supply cord broke, and I am really careful with this,
Graphics cards issues non-stop.

On the plus side my girl friend bought a new Macbook pro 15 and so far so good on that. However that is hers and it is in German so it is a bit harder for me to use.

I bought this machine to do music production, and the various day to day stuff for business. I also paid more as I wanted a machine to have not problems and not just a rice burner crap PC. I had one of those.

It has been really heart-breaking to have this machine have so many problems, especially with poor representation here in Germany. Worst part I bought this in Canada so I there is no store to walk in to for support.

Have exact same machine with dreaded X1600 version.
Have the yellow and thin horizontal graphic anomalies and frequent unexplained freezes and automatic restarts. Fan has been running alot and I leave this on overnight so seems thermal as everyone writes.
Downloaded Fan Control and will see if I can get improvement by forcing higher min. fan speeds.
Next step will be take apart, clear ariways, re-apply paste.
Of course my AppleCare expired in October of 2009!

Steve