Q: MacBook Pro screen blinks

My mid-2009 Mac Book just started flickering last week.  I have a Nidva m9400 card, of course, it's out of warranty.  So irritated.  Any suggestions?  I have read through all your comments, and tried almost every fix, but to no avail.  Makes me want to go back to PC. 

Any other suggestions?  If anyone has experience similar things, could you please let me know what this repair will cost.

Thanks in advance.

Nice one! I was just thinking the exact same thing... Glad it worked!!!

Do you have Mountain Lion Installed? Are all the updates installed?

Does it happen on 9400m only? While on battery or AC?

Do you only have one card or two?

I just came back from Apple

they replaced the display

PROBLEM SOLVED

no more flickering and no more headache within 10 minutes

when you go to www.csse.uwa.edu.av/~lucas/background.html

and your screen flickers, enlarge then the screen and you will see it moves up & down (vibrates)

if so go to apple and ask them to replace your screen

this will solve the problem !!!!!!

Finally after one year of running to the apple store, buying 2 different pairs of glasses and having my eyes measured several times, running to the hospital (eyedoctor)

my problem is finally solved, it was not my eyes, it was the macbook

what I all the time expected there was nothing wrong with my eyes, since I still could see the blond chicks, had no problems with that LOL

yes, I can laugh again !!!

I am running Mountain Lion

Only using that one graphics card.

Have appointment at Mac Store at 6 p.m. today.

It seems to be getting worse.

Good luck.

From the sound of it... it's the nvidia heat issue... you might need a mainboard replacement... or find a shop to resolder the gpu.

Keep us posted!

I've fixed my problem completely.

I was using 2x4gb 1333mhz ram on my late 2008 macbook pro.

Screen blinked only when using the integrated 9400m. Mountain Lion would just kernel panic and crash. Gave up and was using 9600gt all the time.

The problem was the ram, it was NOT faulty but the machine says it needs 1066mhz ram and the out of spec 1333mhz caused the integrated 9400m to overclock itself.

I recently bought new memory and the machine has been rock solid. No more screen blinks as all.

The old memory is just fine running on my hp laptop now.

Having a similiar problem with my Macbook Pro. I went to use it and it was stuck on the boot screen. I reintalled Mac OSX Lion and i got it to boot up but with problems. The screen will blink around every 15 to 20 seconds and the computer is real slow. Can this be a possible hard drive or software issue?

Macbook Pro

13" Early 2011

2.3 GHZ Intel Core i5

4gb 1333 DDR3 memory

Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB

Mac OSX Lion 10.7.5

Thanks

Anyone?

Dago, You are definitely sitting in the wrong place - this dead thread refers to another problem entirely. Start your own thread and someone will probably be able to help you.

@harleybros,

Did you have Apple care? How hard was it to get a free replacement for the display?

I have the same issue as you. Late 2008 MBP 15 inch--LED flicker that hurts my eyes. I have another 13 inch macbook and it does not have that problem.

My apple care expired last year.

I have the same problem... I've had this computer now for a while... bought it on ebay, used of course, but it's still an apple, these shouldn't have the problems that Microshaft pos comptuers do. Why do you think I bought apple, and always have bought apple? My Macbook Pro is a 3,1 with all OS 10.8.3 updates, and even firmware update already installed. I've noticed it when I surf the internet, play Bejeweled 3, watch Netflix on Safari, or play any other games I used to play without a problem.

I have my diagnostics here, but I don't know how to read it. What part do you guys need to be able to help me diagnose this before I waste my time and my fuel going to Charlotte, NC to the Apple store to get it looked at?

OS X, MacBook PRO 13" only a year old; 'slight' flicker not all the way to black screen just started about a week ago. Thought it might be power adapter (cord frayed--why doesn't Apple ever fix this? Power cable weak spot.) Took to GENIUS. Ran tests. Everything looked ok. SInce I had restarted problem didn't seem to recur. Then, today, back to flicker. No logic to it. She speculated it was a phantom ghost of a flash player as they occur on web pages without our knowing. I use chrome as browser and am wondering if there is any setting that would help there.

It has flashed (quick blink of screen but not total dip down to background screen all the time--sometime see quick flash of desttop image) during offline programs as well.

Any software solutions anyone? I don't think Apple knows.

Walker131, I'm having the very same issue. My configuration is:

Late 2009 White Macbook Unibody 2,26GHz 9400M (MacBook6,1), OSX 10.6.8

Looks like it happens only when using Google Chrome. It can be caused by a graphics hack that only Chrome employs. It acts just as you described - a quick blink apperantly inside the browser's document area (DOM container). When it blinks, I can see the desktop image behind or a window from a background application.

It's a fast 1-time flickering which looks like a subliminal message and occurs frequently when using Google web apps (Gmail, Google Search, etc).

I was concerned if this could be a failure caused by a cold bga soldering in the graphics adapter, but I presume it's not the case after reading this topic.

My macbook pro mid 2009 does the exact same thing as yours brdeveloper. I've been testing it out with safari and firefox to see if anything happens but so far nothing. this is pretty scary considering my apple care is dead.