Early 2009 iMac 24" screen issue?

[definitive]

I've been using my 24" iMac for an extended period of time today, and had firefox open in the background while i was working in adobe suite and iwork. at a later time i decided to boot into windows vista through bootcamp, and sat in there for about half hour. i then switched back to osx, and as it was booting up (where the white screen comes up with the apple logo) i noticed a burn-in type of effect at the top of the screen which was displaying osx's firefox outlines. after rebooting the system again the lines were still there. now the system has been on for about half hour, and the lines seem to be gone (i switched background to all white to make sure). i didn't see if the lines were there or not when it was booting into windows because i went afk for a brief period of time while the system was booting up.

is this normal, or is there something wrong with the screen?

edit: just checked again, with a blue and gray background, and the outlines are still there.

 

[diazj3]

Finally, someone with the same problem. I had it too, couldn't find any cases to relate to. Sorry: don´t know what's causing it or how to fix it... I can, however, share my story of how I'm still dealing with it, perhaps this helps you. It's a long, sad story...

My display showed this same problem since I bought the iMac in late 2007, and it got worse with time. The type and intensity of these burns or ghosts vary without a clear pattern or cause. 1.5 years later, I decide to get it fixed once I get a MB.

• 1st act... took my 24" iMac (mid 2007) to the Apple Store to get the display fixed because of that same problem on May 8th (via AppleCare). One week later they tell me there's a critical error with the hard drive - so they'd order the HDD replacement - and perhaps that would fix the display problem. Tried to save my info on the disk, but lost everything.
  
• 2nd Act... The Apple Store took 5 weeks to order the replacement HDD. I called AppleCare and complained, the HDD gets there 3 days later. They replace the HDD, the display still shows the same problems... but NOW they say there's a problem with the logic board and the graphics board - need to replace them too. They also decide to replace the display - even when they don´t know what's the cause of the "burn marks". Thanks to AppleCare help, all replacement parts arrived 2 days later...
  
• 3rd Act... last week they replaced the logic board, the GPU board and the display. The display seems to work OK - the "burned" images seem gone... but NOW the back of the iMac gets way too hot, so they plan to replace something they call the "inverter" (which is the power supply unit). The service diagnostics still shows an error in the HDD, so they also plan to replace an internal cable that goes from the HDD to the logic board.... one more week. The AppleCare representative is evaluating if they should replace yet another expensive part, or if they should cancel it and send me a replacement iMac...

They've escalated all these problems with Apple specialists... but they still don't know the reason for the original display problem, or how it connects to all the other problems & replacements. My advice: backup your files and apps ASAP, and take it to the genius bar. Thank God for AppleCare - be sure to have it.

I really hope they get yours fixed sooner than 8 weeks they are taking with mine...