Q: MacBook Pro screen blinks

Looks like I spoke too soon. After having my computer away at Apple for eight days and having a full logic board replacement, my screen started blinking again on the 9400M card. It's been perfectly fine up until now, when I launched World of Warcraft for the first time since I got it back. I generally switch to the better card when I play, but I forgot so I thought I would see how it did. Ten minutes into playing, it started up. I exited the game and came straight here to post it. So far no blinking in the finder after maybe fifteen minutes. Could it be that its only going to blink when under a heavy workload now? Do I have to juggle my video card usage according to what I'm doing just to avoid a technical problem?

I will continue to monitor it and report back if I see it happening in the finder. If it does and I'm back to square one, do I take it in for a repair again, or just suffer? Funny how Apple hops all over the new 27" iMac problem with updates but these not-the-latest models are ignored. I'll take this in for LB replacement after LB replacement until finally it costs them enough to just replace it entirely. Ugh! I'd much rather they just fixed the issue already...:(

Hi, I'm form Italy and i got a Macbook Pro late 2008 (unibody) and I got this problem: on Nvidia geforce 9400 mi screen is flickering very often but when I switch to 9600 it seems all ok...
I have Apple Care protection plan... what I have to do? go to assistance? there is no solution by some firmware? thanks to all

For those of you who are covered under warranty or AppleCare, the trick seems to be to keep sending your computer back until they get the idea and just send you a new one. I have a brand new replacement on the way and it took a month and a half of being calm and forceful with them.

FWIW, this is not a new problem and got some internet press pretty early on in the computers' distribution.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10329923-263.html
http://www.pbcentral.com/news/viewnews.cgi?id=EkklupyyZARGdcTbdY

It's pretty amazing there's nothing official from Apple about this by now.

Does anyone know if this problem is in the new 15 or 17" MacBook Pro's also or just the Late 2008 MBP's?

I have pay 1800 euro for a mac and the solution is use the 9600 and DON'T use the 9400?!?!?!?
I'm not happy about this situation, I hope that Apple will find a REAL solution...

This is ******* me off....It in the friggin news and they want me to PAY for any repairs to fix this issue because I'm out of warranty?

BS!!!!!!!!!!!

Well I called Apple Care. Made some documentation of it. I'm out of warranty though so the tech said I'll have to take it to an Apple store and pay for the repairs. Hmmm...not submitting to that.

Has anyone had a chance or is willing to try and revert their late 08 MBP to its original shipping system configuration? Then test out if the blinking still occurs with "better battery performance" setting? I would try it, but at this time, my MBP is critical to my business, so I won't have a chance to do this test for awhile.

i just did a fresh reinstall of Snow Leopard and at first I didn't see any flickering and was getting happier by the minute..

I fired up World of Warcraft shortly after, as soon as the laptop got warmer it started flickering away like normal.

No not a fresh install of SL. But a fresh install of the shipping OS for the late 08 MBP. Is that what you have.

I'm fairly certain this is a hardware issue. My MacBook went in for repair and came back with a different logic board. That's when my blinking started. Before that it was fine. And it was running snow leopard before and after the repair. Pretty sure there is no correlation to the OS version.

Late 08 MBP shipped with 10.5.5, then 10.5.6. It didn't ship with Snow Leopard on these models. So has anyone tried reverting back to that? I don't recall seeing the blinking when I first got my MBP on Dec 08.

Is this a hardware problem ? Is software ? Which ? Does anyone know ?

Until someone can or has the time to revert back to 10.5.5 or 10.5.6 original shipping OS for the late 08 MBP, we can't confirm for sure. I just know that this issue didn't occur when I first got my MBP, even when running on "better battery life".