2017 13" Macbook Pro - Screen Issues

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Level 1

9 points

2017 13" Macbook Pro - Screen Issues

Hi,

I have been experiencing screen issues on my 13" Macbook Pro, 2017 128GB model with Retina screen. Horizontal black bars have started appearing on the screen. At the start it was just a single black line just below the menu bar. It would appear after a few hours of screen use. Then more lines started to appear, and they have turned into black bars rather than just lines. Now they pop up after only maybe 30 mins of screen use.

The number of lines are more heavily concentrated on the top and bottom of the screen. After some time on white backgrounds, menu bar items can faintly be seen through the black bar even though the menu bar is hidden; like dead pixels. Sometimes the lines start to flicker as well. The number of lines increase the more the screen stays on.

I want to make sure that it is definitely a hardware issue, something I can't fix at home, before I take it to an authorized service provider because I work from home on the Macbook and don't really have an alternative so even a week without it would be problematic.

Any help is appreciated,

Thanks in advance.

Related photos are attached.

Posted on Dec 18, 2020 11:11 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,752 points

Dec 18, 2020 7:39 PM in response to ahmedkocak

That looks more like a hardware issue to me. You can try connecting an external display and enable mirroring. If the issue only occurs on the built-in display, then you know the laptop's built-in Display Assembly is defective. If the issue occurs on both internal & external displays, then you will need to try the next suggestion.

The only other way to be sure would be to boot from a known good version of macOS such as a clean install of macOS. You can try booting into Internet Recovery Mode (Command + Option + R), but this is not ideal since there isn't much you can do there plus recovery mode doesn't contain the full macOS system. Or you can use a bootable macOS USB installer.

A better option is to install macOS to an external USB3 drive to see if you get the lines while booted to the clean OS on the external drive. If you don't have a spare USB3 drive, then you can try performing the clean install on the internal SSD by first erasing the whole physical SSD before installing macOS. Just make sure you have a good backup or you will lose all your data.

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Answer 2

ahmedkocak Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 23, 2020 10:02 PM in response to ahmedkocak

Hi again,

Sorry for the late reply. I have tried connecting to an external monitor and the problem only occurred on the built-in display. And yesterday it actually worsened, the whole screen had problems not just the top and bottom sides. I would hide an app and half of pixels would still show the app, only disappearing after maybe a minute. At the top it got so complicated that I couldn't see what I was writing on Safari search bar. So I took it to an authorized service provider.

Why has this problem occurred, do you have any idea? I didn't drop it, I haven't spilt on it, is there any fault on my side? I'd like to know, so that once it gets fixed I don't make the same mistakes if it was my fault.

Thanks for the answer.

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