Can my Macbook Pro 1,1 be saved?

[grimreeper525]

I have a 15' Macbook Pro from 2006, with a 2 ghz Core Duo processor, 1 gb of RAM, and an 80 gb hard drive. Throughout the past few months it has become more and more unreliable: the screen completely locks up, requiring a full hard restart, at arbitrary times throughout the day, and this happens with increasing regularity (it started doing it about once a week; then it increased to about once a day; now it usually does it a few times per day). These crashes do not appear to be tied to temperature or intensity of use, and they happen both on the battery and on regular power. Sometimes, but not always, they are preceded by a half an hour or so by arbitrarily placed, 1 pixel wide green horizontal lines appearing on the screen.

I thought it might be a software issue, so I wiped the hard drive clean and started with a fresh copy of 10.6, but the problem persists as before. Thus, my questions are these:

1. What hardware component is most likely at fault?
2. Is there a place where I can purchase a reasonably priced replacement? (I'm fine installing it myself.) Or is the computer irreparably on its last leg? It works perfectly in all other respects, and I'd like to continue using it for another couple of years if this problem can be solved for significantly under the cost of buying a new one.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Sometimes, but not always, they are preceded by a half an hour or so by arbitrarily placed, 1 pixel wide green horizontal lines appearing on the screen.

That sounds like the video card is going. If that's the case, you'll need a new video card, which is unfortunately soldered onto the motherboard.

 

[Silencio]

I have a client whose MacBook Pro (2.16GHz Core Duo) was having similar problems. Same green horizontal lines (though on an external display), same random hard freezes. Further testing revealed a dead 1GB SODIMM and a dead hard drive (which I had upgraded only about five or six months earlier). Replacing those items and clean installing Leopard didn't solve the problem.

I pretty much concluded that the logic board is failing. For the price you'd pay to get a used logic board and the time and effort you'd expend to install it, I'd say it's not really worth the effort.

 

[Azrael169]

My mac recently died as well so i can make this alot easier for you. Put in your OSX CD and as you turn on your laptop hold down the "D" button. This allows you to boot up into diagnostic mode. The mac will run some internal tests and tells you whats wrong. If nothing comes up you have a option of running a more extensive examination.

Doing this quickly revealed my vid card was at fault.