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Macbook pro issue! Screen goes black at certain times!

J

JudasCow

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 19, 2011
3
0
Hi, I have a MacBook Pro from around July 2010. Recently, I've been having some issues with my screen going black at certain times. I've been able to recreate the issue by trying to stream some television and trying to watch a video from my phone in Quicktime Player. (EDIT: Oddly enough, playing the ~10 second clip a few times will make the screen go black, but I tried playing a 2 min HD Green Lantern trailer on my desktop a few times and nothing happens.) (EDIT2: Playing the same clips from my phone on VLC player many times, nothing happens.) Sometimes, the audio of whatever I was trying to play seems to freeze and gets stuck or sometimes it just stops altogether.

Every time this happens, I have to hold the power button down to reset it. The nearest Apple store is a bit far, so I was wondering if anyone can help me or has any idea what the problem might be.

Thanks!
 
Last edited:
L

LazyMacGuy

macrumors member
Apr 11, 2011
38
0
UK
Are you running a lot of background processes? This could cause the video to freeze at a black screen.

You may not have the correct codecs installed/corrupted movie file which would explain why it happens on some clips and not the others.

The fact that it is happening in Quicktime but not in VLC suggests to me that it is quite probably a codec problem. Try watching clips in quicktime and when one causes the black screen try it in VLC and see if it still happens.

Let me know how it goes.

Peace
 
S

salsa

macrumors newbie
May 25, 2011
3
0
black screen prob

hi. Got my macbook pro 6.2 , in Apr 2010. Recently when on high performance games the screen goes black and I have to restart. Sound goes too. Have had the comp looked at by Apple...it has been maxed out and left running for 12 hours....they didn't find anything wrong with the hardware. Had the hard drive wiped back to factory setting cos thought it might be the software. No improvement. Have upgraded internet to 30MB....has not improved. Thinking of upgrading the graphics card or processor or both. Have Nvidia GeForce 333 M. Any ideas?
 
J

JudasCow

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 19, 2011
3
0
Played the clip ~7 times on VLC. Tried it on Quicktime. Crashed on the first try. What now?
 
L

LazyMacGuy

macrumors member
Apr 11, 2011
38
0
UK
This is because VLC contains pretty much all the codecs you will ever need whereas Quicktime doesn't.

Just use VLC as your default player and it'll play fine 99% of the time.

Is there any reason why you want to use quicktime?

@Salsa - My bet would be the graphics card is just crashing, but I can't be sure. When Apple tested it they would have tested the processor etc and probably not the graphics card. Are you playing the games on a Windows partition or Mac??

Peace
 
S

salsa

macrumors newbie
May 25, 2011
3
0
black screen

hi and thanx for the reply.
Am using MacBook Pro 6.2 bought last april. Snow Leopard.
Windows is not installed on it.
xx
 
S

salsa

macrumors newbie
May 25, 2011
3
0
black screen

hi again LazyMacGuy
Did show the techy guys at the genius bar the problem directly. They saw what happened so would have thought they would test the card. However, the sound also stops too, even if its spotify. xx
 
maccompaq

maccompaq

macrumors 65816
Mar 6, 2007
1,169
24
Your problem could be as simple as memory fragmentation. Do a warm reboot and then try again to see if that fixes the problem.
 
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