BSOD now in a Mac?

[tomasremi]

I'm sorry, but I am having this odd problem. When working on my Mac, the screen suddenly turns blue. That's all it happens... Usually this ocurrs when I press a key, although it's not A specific key. It first happened with the "Up" button, then with the "Volume up" (F12 in my Macbook), but this only happened once, I can now press these keys with no problem at all.

The Scene

I have a "new" Black Macbook, I bought it on December 2007, this is the general "Hardware Overview" by System Profiler:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB31.008E.B02
SMC Version: 1.24f2

The Story

On a flight I made, I took my Mac on a bag with me. I saw a bit of a movie on the plane. When the flight arrived, I had to wait about 5hs on the airport. In the same bag I had my Mac I had a thermos which was empty, but I filled it with hot water. The thermos had some problems, and some water leaked. Nonetheless, I had my Mac on a "laptop bag". It had some problems, I had to dry some parts but at least it seemed that it didn't have water inside the computer. When I sat in a bar to dry it up, I then opened and the computer screen had gone blue. I started hitting some keys, and nothing happened. I turned it off, and when I turned it back on, I couldn't get to the login screen since just before it appeared a blue screen just like the one I am getting now appeared. I turned it back off and then on again, this time pressing "Option + S" (Having no manual with me, I just tried to guess the safe mode, task in which I obviously failed, but...) which DID work, since I could use my Mac, I even finished watching the movie.
When I got home, again I had the same problem. When it woke from sleep, I just got blue screen again and again, and when I turned it on, blue screen again. Since my battery was really low and I was really tired, I decided not to try the Option + S but instead, tried to get some sleep. When I woke up, I tried again to turn on the computer and it worked just fine. I had it up -no sleep- for one week, and when I got into the plane again (I had to sleep it since I had to close it) and woke it up, it worked.
So, once again back at home, I left it awake. However, I forgot to plug it in, and so I ran out of battery. When I turned it back on, blue screen again. Once again, I decided to wait until the battery got full charge (I acknowledged the "Option + S" working just to chance), and tried to get it to work. Every time I turned it on it was getting the Mac white screen, the apple logo, the loading, and when it was about to get to the login screen, blue again. I tried the Option + S and it worked once again (I tried real safe mode as well and it also worked, however I couldn't get it to work afterwords and safemode sucks). When I finally got it going, I searched this forums for help. I ran the Disk Utility, and tried "Verify Disk" which resulted in "No problems" and "Verify Permissions", which had some problems that I did solve with my Mac CD. Everything seemed to work perfect, but then the other day I moved my Mac to use it in another place (the toilet) and I got blue screen again. When I was taking it back to the usual table I have it in, the screen came back again. I didn't reset it after that incident. Today, while watching a movie, I got the blue screen several times. The screen just goes blue, sometimes darker, sometimes lighter. If music is playing, it continues to play. The keyboard does not answer at all in that moments. Today I turned it off and back on after that incident, and is working OK by now. Before, it had a "long" uptime (about a week) and no sleep in between (I don't usually let it sleep, I leave the Azureus running). One additional info: I have an accesory to watch my Mac on the TV. When I connect it I get this blue screen for a while and then I get the image as seen on the TV, plus I can see my Mac screen on TV. Today I connected the Mac into this accessory but nothing happened. I didn't check the TV to see if I could see my Mac screen, but chances are that this wouldn't be possible, because my Mac didn't aknowledge this gadget at all...

If you could help me, I would be very grateful. I love my Mac, and I hate it to see that it starts to work as my old PC, where I had to do all this tricks in order to get it working (press this button while you turn it on, then lift your right hand and your foot, you know, Windows stuff)

Thanks in advance...

Tomás

 

[patrick0brien]

-tomasremi

First off a BSOD to a PC is a Kernal Panic to a Mac, and it looks completely different, the screen goes to half brightness, and a greyscale splash in multiple languages will appear instructing you to restart the machine. A normal occurance of this is maybe twice a year. More than that, you may have a hardware issue.

On to your current challenge. I'm assuming the blue screen you are seeing is not deep blue, but the same light blue that displays on startup after the greyscreen rolling clock, but before the login window and desktop picture loads.

I only mention this because your answer may shed further light on this issue.

Regardless, what you are experiencing is very, very unusual. In fact, I've never heard of it. But! I have ideas.

1. Bad news: the water leaked into your computer's case and is shorting out the graphics card.
Likelyhood: Low.
You yourself said that the computer didn't seem to have received enough water to have leaked that far, and I'd think you'd be seeing actual Kernal Panics, not something so isolated to the video.

2. Not-so-bad news: a little water leaked into your video port, just enough to make it think you were trying to connect an external monitor. It headfakes without a response from the video device (because there isn't any) and it sits at the transition screen - which happens to be light blue.
Likelyhood: pretty good.
It fits your story as you wrote it. The keyboard non-responsive but the sound is still going, etc.

I'd hairdryer your video port on high air, low heat for a few hours. Your machines usage and heat changes could be causing condensation changes, triggering the funky timing of the effect.

 

[Consultant]

User damage

In the same bag I had my Mac I had a thermos which was empty, but I filled it with hot water. The thermos had some problems, and some water leaked.

No that means it was filled with water. Filled is not empty.

Water -> laptop = damage

 

[tomasremi]

On to your current challenge. I'm assuming the blue screen you are seeing is not deep blue, but the same light blue that displays on startup after the greyscreen rolling clock, but before the login window and desktop picture loads.

Exactly this is the blue I get

2. Not-so-bad news: a little water leaked into your video port, just enough to make it think you were trying to connect an external monitor. It headfakes without a response from the video device (because there isn't any) and it sits at the transition screen - which happens to be light blue.
Likelyhood: pretty good.
It fits your story as you wrote it. The keyboard non-responsive but the sound is still going, etc.

I'd hairdryer your video port on high air, low heat for a few hours. Your machines usage and heat changes could be causing condensation changes, triggering the funky timing of the effect.

This makes sence, I hadn't thought about this. I'll try your home-made fix and tell you about it. In fact, I realized that in more humid places this happens more often, and that when I move my Mac this tends to happen, so I'll try that. Thanks!

PD: The only reason as to why I added the fact that the thermos WAS empty, and then I filled it, was to explain that the thermos problem hadn't occurred during all the flight time, and then some time more, it was just an instant. My books got very little damage too, in fact.

PD2: The title is just a sentence that could try to explain my problem, I had read somewhere in the web that thing about the kernal panic grey screen...