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User profile for user: bergonzzi
bergonzzi Author
User level: Level 1
2 points

Macbook Pro screen fuzzy with lines and freezes

Hi,


My Macbook Pro from late 2011 started showing some weird behaviour a few days ago. All of a sudden the screen went black for a few seconds and came back with a kind of distorted image. The screen was cut in half and a bit fuzzy. From then on it started happening more often with no specific trigger (i.e. there's not a sepecific action I do that causes it).


I already tried reparing the disk and permissions but that didn't solve. I also tried booting up with the option to reinstall the system from scratch but actually the same problem happened while it was downloading additional files for the installation, and the whole thing just froze.


If I wait long enough with the screen on that state I can hear 3 beeps with a 5 second pause which according to apple support it means a problem with RAM.


I opened the back and removed the RAM modules (2 modules of 4GB each) and tried to clean them up and them put it back together but that didn't help.


Running the Apple hardware test doesn't find anything wrong with it although I didn't run the extended test yet.


Here are a few images to show you what I'm talking about.


Is this likely to be a RAM issue, a graphics card issue or something else?


http://i.imgur.com/cbr91I5.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/9VN3BaI.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/CErEv8D.jpg


Thanks for any help.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Dec 14, 2013 6:31 PM

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User profile for user: PlotinusVeritas
PlotinusVeritas
User level: Level 6
14,872 points

Posted on Dec 14, 2013 6:46 PM

Yes, thats a possibility, however given the RAM indicator, it would have to be BOTH.



Your screenshots are not typical of indicative GPU problems.



Random bad RAM manifests that way, so its still typical to bad RAM.



You should be "happy" its merely bad RAM, you dont want the other........



Grab some RAM at best buy etc, install and verify, you have a return on the RAM, and its surely the RAM.



However online diagnostics are limited, experience in computer repairs says your screen shots are NOT GPU related.

😊

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User profile for user: PlotinusVeritas
PlotinusVeritas
User level: Level 6
14,872 points

Dec 14, 2013 6:46 PM in response to bergonzzi

Yes, thats a possibility, however given the RAM indicator, it would have to be BOTH.



Your screenshots are not typical of indicative GPU problems.



Random bad RAM manifests that way, so its still typical to bad RAM.



You should be "happy" its merely bad RAM, you dont want the other........



Grab some RAM at best buy etc, install and verify, you have a return on the RAM, and its surely the RAM.



However online diagnostics are limited, experience in computer repairs says your screen shots are NOT GPU related.

😊

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User profile for user: bergonzzi
bergonzzi Author
User level: Level 1
2 points

Dec 26, 2013 9:55 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas

An update to this:


I bought new RAM (2x 8gb Corsair DD3 1333Mhz) and replaced it, first 1 DIMM only which worked fine and then I installed the second one. It recognized the 16gb without a problem and it all seemed fined for a few minutes but then I got a grey screen and a distorted image just like before.


So it seems like this is probably not just the RAM unfortunately...


Any ideas about how else I can pinpoint the exact problem? Will the extended hardware test identify any issues with the GPU?


Thanks

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User profile for user: soffpro
soffpro
User level: Level 1
9 points

Feb 8, 2015 11:13 AM in response to bergonzzi

I have a Macbook pro 2010 and looked at this topic for the same subject.


one thing you may wish to check is a problem i encountered and got fixed at the Apple store by a 'genius' - that is that the unibody macbook pros have screen connectors that work loose over time - WHAT?!!! a £2,000 machine has a connector that works loose? why don't they screw it down?


who knows? such geniuses.


anyway, it's a possibility, but also if your ram has been buffering a heavy load - mine was struggling with buffering some streamed television when this happened to me, even though i deleted the cache' it must've had too much processing to cope with when i went on to try doing other stuff (mine's an i5 processor, so again you wouldn't have thought it would struggle, but hey ho, seems Macbook pros are subject to age problems too.


so before you blame Ram - find out how to check the connection ribbon. hope it resolves.

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Macbook Pro screen fuzzy with lines and freezes

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