Rare case of black vertical line on my screen

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Level 1

10 points

Rare case of black vertical line on my screen

My MacBook Pro (mid 2017 version) sometimes shows a black vertical line at start-up when my Mac is 'cold' (it shows up at my login screen). After logging in, the black line immediately disappears. Only in one case, it stuck around for like 5 mins after login.

So when my MacBook is booted for the first time of the day, it may be highly likely that that black vertical line shows up as described. After the first boot, it never comes back. Unless I shut down my MacBook and leave it like that for a couple of hours so the device gets cold again.

I did a clean install, I've reset the SMC and PRAM, did everything I was told to by the Apple Online Chat. Unfortunately, that same line keeps appearing at boot-up when my Mac is cold. I got the advice to book an appointment with a Genius Bar for repair as the guy that helped me out, concluded my issue as a possible hardware malfunction.

However, I'm wondering what the exact issue behind this error may be. I've searched on the internet for similar issues but could never find any. Most people with GPU issues, if it is a GPU issue at all, have way different lines than I do and most of these errors were with older models. My MacBook Pro is a brand-new 2017-model (bought it late October 2017).

I've added a photo of the issue.

Thanks in advance!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.2)

Posted on Dec 17, 2017 8:32 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

127,045 points

Dec 17, 2017 9:11 AM in response to Jackk1233

Wow that is hard to see on the forums. I dragged and dropped the picture onto Preview and stretched it out, and I can see what looks like a 1-pixel wide vertical line about an inch and a half to the left of your login Icon.

What is really interesting is that you used another camera to take a picture of the screen. If you can get that articfat to show while macOS is fully up and running, take a screen shot (with Command-shift-4).

-- If the artifact DOES show on the screenshot, it is present in the Mac's screen buffer and is a Mac (motherboard) Defect.

-- if the artifact does NOT show on the screen shot, it is a defect in the rasterization and display Hardware (potentially a SCREEN defect).

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