Screen Tear during Restart or Power-up

Question

Lion 2012 Author

Level 1

30 points

Screen Tear during Restart or Power-up

Hello everyone.

Since last October, I had this issue after I upgraded to macOS Sierra (version 10.12.2).

Basically when I turn on my MacBook Pro (late 2011) the gray screen with Apple logo shows up and then the

upper part of the screen gets a horizontal bar with multi-colored pixels. After that horizontal line, the screen gets black for 1-2 seconds. And then the normal Apple gray screen show up (and brings me to log-in portal).

I tried to go to Apple store but I ended up cancelling 3 or 4 times due to tight schedules.

I'm suspecting this issue may be a software-related (possibly a bug from Sierra?) but I don't really know.

I ran Apple hardware test several times and it came out normal. I also installed Samsung EVO

SSD but the internal driver didn't cause any noticeable problems.

So I don't know whether the screen tear is a bug or it's something related to video cards and others. But the Genius Bar guy told me there wasn't any problem with video/ graphic cards. Any suggestions or thoughts for this weird issue I'm having? I MacBook Pro's OS is up to date by the way. Thank you in advance!

MacBook Pro, macOS Sierra (10.12.2), has Samsung 850 EVO SSD installed

Posted on Jan 30, 2017 3:56 PM

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Answer 1

leroydouglas

Level 10

199,344 points

Jan 30, 2017 6:34 PM in response to Lion 2012

Can you fall back to your previous OS X. to test.

2011 MBP had all kinds of video issues.

The extended recall has expired, see bottom after the jump:

https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/

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Answer 2

Lion 2012 Author

Level 1

30 points

Jan 31, 2017 10:38 AM in response to tjk

Hi. I already updated to version 10.12.3 but the issue is still there.

Have you ever seen anyone with Sierra having similar screen tear issues?

When I bought my MBP with Lion OS X (4 yrs ago) it already came with a screen tear bug.

The only way to get rid of that bug was upgrading to Mountain Lion.

But if the screen tear doesn't disappear after an upgrade, could it be something else like deteriorating graphic cards? Maybe a Genius Bar employee failed to detect certain underlying hardware problems and told me everything looked fine. At this point, I believe I should go back to a local Apple store. The only problem is some young Genius Bar employees aren't good as senior members (people with lengthy Apple careers). It's like hit or miss

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Answer 3

Courcoul

Level 6

18,684 points

Jan 31, 2017 10:40 AM in response to Lion 2012

I've had the same behavior occur on a Mid-2015 rMBP running ElCap 10.11.6. Started happening as the system was restarting following the latest round of security updates. But did not happen on my older Late 2011 MBP running the same system and which was also updated at the same time.

So I would posit the issue is hardware related and not limited to a single MacOS release. Something in the remediation code present in both Sierra's and ElCap's fixes for the vulnerabilities being patched.

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Answer 4

Lion 2012 Author

Level 1

30 points

Jan 31, 2017 11:35 AM in response to Courcoul

I experienced occasional blackouts when I had ElCaptain. And like you said, this might be a potential hardware problem. There was one incident when my mom dropped a heavy box on my MBP. The physical impact damaged the old hard drive and I ended up getting a new SSD. After this incident some new problems showed up including the screen tear, occasional cursor freezes and slow wake up from sleep mode. For 4 years, I never had those problems except for Lion's screen tear bug and logic board failure. Maybe some hardware components were affected during that incident. Or maybe my computer is so old its undergoing its aged-related issues. But 2 Genius Bar employees told me they didn't see a problem after running their hardware tests (last year). But I'm going to try one more time to see if it's really something important to take care of.

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Answer 5

Courcoul

Level 6

18,684 points

Jan 31, 2017 1:22 PM in response to Lion 2012

Lion 2012 wrote:

I'll give it try. And I agree a lot of 2011 models had video card problems besides logic board failures.

Been there, done that...

Ye Olde 2011 MBP had its GPU go titsup, but fortunately within the AppleCare coverage so I got a new board for "free". Given that it croaked after about 2.5 years, am hoping the new board lives a tad longer. Just replaced the fans on it, one had a shot bearing and was making a racket, now runs much cooler and maybe this keeps it alive longer.

But this one did not have the tear you describe like my newer gear, even though it's the same OS.

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