Macbook Pro - lines on screen

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Macbook Pro - lines on screen

I have a Macbook Pro given to me for work. The monitor has these wierd lines in the background as if I had a bunch of spotlights going up from teh bottom of the monitor. It makes some areas lighter and darker almost as if the background was wavy.

I know this is an odd question, but I'm normally a PC user and I have never seen a monitor do this before - I assume it needs to be serviced. Can anyone verify that this is a problem or is it the way the monitor just is

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Nov 24, 2008 12:33 PM

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Answer 1

bandit

Level 3

895 points

Nov 24, 2008 1:26 PM in response to s_anthony

This just happened to me today. There is a really long thread here about it under "strange vertical lines"

No solution as of yet.

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Answer 2

Dec 1, 2008 8:36 AM in response to bandit

Hi,

I found this thread by Googling for this exact problem. (I couldn't have described the problem better than s_anthony has)

I am having exactly the same issue. It looks to me as though the monitor isn't illuminating the bottom of the screen correctly.
I was certain that the monitor had suffered some hardware error, but to get rid of these lines, all I had to do was restart my laptop. Very strange, but this error seems fairly substantial and is worrying, so any further info. on this subject would be welcomed.

I tried to search for the thread specified by bandit, but unfortunately couldn't find it.

Thanks in advance,
dub

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Answer 3

s_anthony Author

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Dec 1, 2008 8:39 AM in response to dub design

I've been trying to reproduce it by making my monitor go as far back as it could to test if it might have been a heat thing going up through the monitor itself - and it doesn't happen. It seems almost to occur more on battery power than on power adapter, but this is just a late observation and have no real proof of this yet.

Very annoying I can say for sure...

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Answer 4

s_anthony Author

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Dec 1, 2008 8:41 AM in response to s_anthony

I also cannot find Bandit's posting .. if anyone has a link I would appreciate the link 🙂

Going back to my PC for now as it is too annoying to stare at my screen and dig through gigs worth of logs with this "stage" view.. Apple almost had a convert until this problem popped up.. almost...

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Answer 5

bandit

Level 3

895 points

Dec 1, 2008 10:59 AM in response to s_anthony

Sorry for not replying. Out of town for the holiday. Here is the link. I just searched "strange vertical lines" i didn't choose a forum. This link is a continuation of a previous forum. There are a lot of people out there with this problem.

I restarted my Macbook Pro and the problem went away. It hasn't happened since. I usually leave my screen brightness on full brightness, and at home i use it plugged in, not on battery power. When the stripes appeared, I had turned down the brightness before putting the laptop to sleep. Don't know it that makes a difference or not.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8038315&#8038315

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Answer 6

s_anthony Author

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Dec 29, 2008 5:24 PM in response to bandit

Well.. this is just great. My backlighting on my Mac is now dead. I'm working off of a second monitor that was just delivered thankfully otherwise I'd be really screwed right now.

Guess I'm going to have to take my chances at the Mac store tomorrow and hope that they can replace it while I'm there otherwise I'm going to have to wait since I have work that has to be done over the holidays.

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