Vertical Stripes on Screen and computer crashes

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
Has there been any visible indication of damage to the screen or its hinge?
If not, look on http://www.apple.com/buy/ for an authorized service center. Determine if your machine is under this program:

http://www.apple.com/support/exchange_repair/macbookpro.html

Or AppleCare, and proceed from there.

If you have Applecare, then you are covered for three years from date of purchase. Check into that before taking it to an authorized service center - as long as you are under warranty, you should not have to pay.

If you have Applecare, then you are covered for three years from date of purchase.

Just one minor correction:

If you have Applecare, then you are covered for three years from date of COMPUTER's purchase.

Thanks for the correction; obviously, that is what I meant....

Hello,
I'm having the same issue. My MBP is also a couple years old. I have the Nvidia GEForce 8600, but I'm not sure if this problem has been addressed as one of the issues of the faulty video controller.
I ran a hardware test and I got this error: 4VDC/1/40000003: Videocontroller, I've been looking around the forums and many users are reporting that error, but not related with this purple and green stripes.
Is anyone else experimenting this issue? Do you think it is a faulty Nvidia? Please let me know!
BTW I don't have apple care that's why I'm a bit concerned about this issue... 😉
Thanks!

Message was edited by: laminarpanda

Welcome to Apple Discussions!

I don't know if you are viewing this thread in tree, threaded or flat, but threaded allows you to see the entire thread with better reference to all the posts when the thread is not too long. The answer resides in my earlier post.

http://www.apple.com/support/exchange_repair/macbookpro.html

Is the program if you are not under AppleCare. Print it out, and take it to your local service center if that is the case, or call the number referenced by that page.

Is anyone else experimenting this issue?

I suggest reading all the threads under the board and you'll see a myriad of symptoms regarding displays including the one listed. The fact the hardware test says you have an issue, and you have an 8600M puts the likelihood of you being under the post AppleCare exchange program fairly high if there isn't any external physical damage, and no user hardware installations inside. Please post a new topic if you want to solve problems that aren't obviously indicated by the hardware test. You'll get a wider audience and won't confuse the original poster with solutions that don't apply to them.

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?

Please reread the entire thread. You aren't doing anything to answer the original poster, and suggestions have been offered on how to start your own topic.

Message was edited by: a brody

As sehayward posted in this forum, I had these exactly symptoms yesterday, also the Apple Hardware Test gave me this error we all already know (4VDC/1/40000003 Video Controller). Today early morning I took my Macbook Pro(a 2.2 GHz Santa Rosa with nVidia 8600GT)to the Apple Authorized Dealer here in Paraguay, they asked me for the two DVDs it came with my Mac and they told me they will going to do all the necessary tests to then report it to Apple so they will decide if my Macbook will going to be repaired. This will take 24 to 48 hours. It's more than obvious this problem is something related to the nVidia 8600GT issue.

For those who lives outside the U.S.A. you should print this ( http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377) and explain this to them, sometimes they don't even realize what is going on.

At least I didn't have any problem with them explaining what happened, they took my Macbook with the disks. Let see what they say tomorrow....

Message was edited by: OsvaL

OsvaL

What can we do to get Apples attention on this??

Product Feedback

I wrote a long letter to Apple using the link you provided.

Today I called to my local AASP here in Paraguay and they told me that APPLE Latin America didn't authorize the repair because my laptop isn't among the affected Macbooks. WRONG! My Macbook Pro is a 2.2GHz core 2 duo with nVidia 8600GT!! and YES, it is among them! Today I visited the store again with all the prints from Apple's website and all the tests I did it using Apple Hardware Test and now they will communicate directly with Apple USA to report my problem and get the authorization. Tomorrow I have to call them in order to know the answer from Apple. This is INCONCEIVABLE!! we cannot pay more than 2000 USD for a failed computer, at least, ALL the Apple Stores and AASP should be aware of this problem and should not complain when a customer take a failed computer for a repair.

Tomorrow I will write again here.

The AASP here told me they can't run the necessary software tests on my mac because the machine doesn't allow it, they can't get the authorization code from Apple Latin America without this tests. They will try one more time.

My only option I have is to take my laptop to an Apple Store from USA. Next month I will be there, lets hope they can solve my problem.

Here they don't have the necessary diagnostic tools to determine the fault.

:S

:S