Q: MacBook Pro screen blinks

I Had this issue one or two times when the 9400m was activaded. The Spolight search window flickers (like in the youtobe-video) and on webscrolling in safari, the letters going corrupt

like this:

http://images.appleinsider.com/screen_corruptionpenryn.jpg

didn't mention it before cause I (almost) never use spotlight but I have the same problem....

After 6 phone calls to Apple Care and a visit to the service provider, Apple is now going to replace the laptop. Hopefully I'll have better luck next time!

Apple care isn't interested in these discussions and seem to think these are isolated cases, so I think it's a good idea to keep calling them and reporting the problems so they can log them.

so which model are they going to give you??? i have the same problem too.... it is kind of annoying... @@

I just finished reading this entire thread (took a while!). I have a 15" Unibody Macbook Pro (2.53 ghz) that I bought early in 2009 (it's the last one with a removable battery). I do not have the flickering problem that some people are having but I do have random, intermittent screen blinks. Some times it's at the top 1/3 of the screen but other times it's the whole screen. It's very quick and flashes black for less than a fraction of a second. But still annoying.

I generally have my Macbook Pro charging (i.e., not running off the battery). I also generally never have anything hooked up to it except a Sennheiser headset that runs off USB. No external monitors. I also exclusively run the 9400M (Better battery life).

Will change to 9600M (Higher performance) and see if problem persists and update this post later.

*Hardware Overview*:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.53 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP51.0074.B01
SMC Version (system): 1.33f8
Serial Number (system): W89XXXXXXGN
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

Graphics:

NVIDIA GeForce 9400M:

Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
Type: Display
Bus: PCI
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0863
Revision ID: 0x00b1
ROM Revision: 3343
gMux Version: 1.7.3
Displays:
Color LCD:
Resolution: 1440 x 900
Depth: 32-Bit Color
Core Image: Hardware Accelerated
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Built-In: Yes
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected

*LCD Model number*:

00009C84

I am having troubles with my MacBook Pro 15inch 2.4 Ghz as well. It is sometimes similar to problems described in posts above. My machine is around two years old.

Below are my notes and observations.

The previous week my MacBook Pro has displayed the following visual anomalies
1 very short flashes of black (fullscreen)
2 screen flickering (rapid flashes, like a stroboscope, stops and starts again after few seconds)
3 screen corruption: weird colors, clipped lines, image distortion (in Console.app, iPhoto, iTunes, etc.)

During these anomalies, the machine is very unresponsive (quite often I mistook it for an completely hung system). All user interaction (like clicking and keypresses) get executed several seconds and sometimes even minutes later.
But music continues to play and it is possible to make a screengrab (after waiting).

Turning the system on and off gives a kernel panic during boot most of the time. Booting using verbose mode (apple-v) did the trick most of the time, but sometimes stuff was so corrupted I had to do a boot with the Leopard install-dvd and do a repair disk and repair permissions.

Temperature measuring of cpu and gpu did not indicate an overheated system.


Problems are reproducible by doing a specific sort of graphic intensive task. Like clicking through your images in iPhoto, or turning on the Visualizer in iTunes. Running OpenGL games however did not result in corruption (still have to confirm this). I suspect applications using a framework like coreImage, but I still need to check this.

Also, I did run the hardware test:
The Apple Hardware Test reports the following error:
"4VDC/1/40000003:videocontroller"
During both the short and long tests.


When I turn off QuartzExtreme, using 'Quartz Debug' (in the Development tools) it seems to stop the corruption (but results in a almost unusable system due to slow graphic updates like moving windows or scrolling). Console.app still has graphical corruption during scrolling but will display correctly when one switches to another app.


As far as I know now it can be one of the following:
1 a defect graphic part (the nVidia 8600)
2 another hardware malfunction (motherboard?)
3 a bug in the recently released firmware upgrade for the MacBook Pro
4 some other software related issue (for example in the recent 10.5.7 update).

Any thoughts on this?

Message was edited by: Zakalwe

John,

I have the exact same system as you, after two times replacing the screen which did not fix it they finally replaced the logic board and for about 1.5 weeks I have had no "blinking". I think after the logic board replacement my system is running a littler cooler. Using iStat menus I notice right now my machine is running about 135F, where before in the same room going the same thing (just casual browsing) it was closer to 150F. Not sure if that is important info or not but wanted to mention it anyway.

Get them to replace your logic board! I had a video using a Flip of my screen blink so that helped convince them a to do it.

Hey there,

i had it all...i had the 2,53 for about 4 times and the 2,66 macbook.pro another 4 or 5 times. with every book i had this horrible blinking and flickering screen at low brightness and just in battery.mode. i had to send my book fully back to get my money back.

with my 3rd order finally everything is OK!!!!! Since the new unibody.macbooks came out in october i ordered one at the end of october and tried to get a flicker free macbook since then.

now i have my 10th machine (the first 15" with the better battery!!!) and its all fine. i think they had a problem with the batterypower!

my 15" has the flickering at low brightness problem with or without battery. However my june 17" has no flicker whatsoever, so i'm happy about that.

Any progress on this issue for anyone?

Hello, I have a MBP that was purchased just before the last ones came out. I have been running the 9600M GT for the last month or so and did not notice any problem. Now that I am running the 9400M the top half of the screen goes blank and comes back really fast infrequently. The thing that I am suspicious of is the 10.5.8 update; I had not noticed it before installing it.

The blinking you describe has always been only on the 9400 chip. I was hoping it would be fixed in the .8 updated but no joy.

aehaas

So, just how pervasive is this problem, anyway?

What are you guys (who have the problem) doing about it at this point?

People say to replace the logic board, but I imagine it would be hard to convince Apple to just do a logic board replacement, especially for a problem which is nearly impossible to demonstrate on demand. The last thing I need is to go through display replacements and all that hassle before a logic board replacement, this being my main and only computer. So, for now, I'm waiting and seeing....

Man, it *****, because other than this black flash problem, this computer is amazing.

I've had this issue for some months.

My screen was replaced, so was my logic board. And the problems persists.


So...we're kinda screwed here. Apple doesn't give a ****.

I have the same problem I guess. Just annoying for the moment. If it gets worst then it might become a real issue.

Fred