Horizontal Lines & Freezing on Mac Mini in Bootcamp

[pkoury]

Hello,

I'm hoping someone might be able to help diagnose or troubleshoot issues we're having with some Mac Minis in our dental practice.

We have 11 Minis and some run Bootcamp while others run Parallels (depending on where they are being used). They are Late 2012 models with 2.5GHz i5 and Intel HD 4000 1536MB.

A few months ago, one of the Minis developed an issue just like what we're dealing with now. While on Bootcamp it would freeze and produce horizontal lines across the screen. After a while of this happening every few days I decided to swap the problem Mini with one of the Minis that is used in the Parallels configuration of running windows. Since then, that Mini has been absolutely fine (going on over month).

We're now dealing with the same problem (today was the 2nd time it happened, see attached image) on a completely different Mini that also runs in the Bootcamp configuration.

Any thoughts on where the best place is to start diagnosing these issues?

 

[Crosscreek]

Looks like a Bootcamp video driver issue. Have you received Bootcamp tools updates recently from Apple?

Also check that fan is clear of dust. Overheating can cause video problems also.

 

[pkoury]

Looks like a Bootcamp video driver issue. Have you received Bootcamp tools updates recently from Apple?

Also check that fan is clear of dust. Overheating can cause video problems also.

Thanks for the advice. I've cleaned out the fan and updated Boot Camp Drivers. Waiting to see what happens but in the meantime I'm going to do the same to every other Mini in the office.

 

[SoCalReviews]

Try jiggling or physically disconnecting and reconnecting the plug for your video/monitor on the Mac Mini side and the monitor side. I know it sounds silly but I most of my video display problems have been related to the plug connection when the Mini or its chords are inadvertently moved or bumped. It's worth a try.

 

[pkoury]

Try jiggling or physically disconnecting and reconnecting the plug for your video/monitor on the Mac Mini side and the monitor side. I know it sounds silly but I most of my video display problems have been related to the plug connection when the Mini or its chords are inadvertently moved or bumped. It's worth a try.

That was my first thought and I did try that. The computers don't move and the wiring is pretty inaccessible so I don't think it's likely.

 

[SoCalReviews]

That was my first thought and I did try that. The computers don't move and the wiring is pretty inaccessible so I don't think it's likely.

Realize that over time the monitor cables can simply come loose on their own due to the weight of the cabling or because of other cables hanging down on them so it's always good to double and triple check those and completely eliminate that possibility for sure or you will kick yourself later on.

Here is another simple thing to try that has solved monitor problems before... actually I did this as recently as last week on a Mac Mini that was having problems receiving the correct signaling from a KVM switch after a power outage. Shut down the Mac Mini and then unplug the monitor from it's power source for a minute. Plug the monitor power back in and then restart the Mac Mini.

The signaling sometimes goes wrong to the monitor after an OS update (like a Windows update) or after switching display states from the MacOS settings to Windows settings or visa versa. This could require the monitor's video detection settings need to be refreshed similar to rebooting a computer. I used to see this problem all the time with Windows OS based computers. Since I mostly use Parallels (which usually syncs the right video resolution to the Mac) instead of Bootcamp or a dedicated Windows PC I normally don't see this problem anymore.

If those solutions don't work then next I would suspect a Windows driver problem or some issue relating to a Windows update. I have read that bad RAM can also cause video problems since the Intel chipset based Mac Mini shares part of it's system RAM resources for video RAM.

 

[pkoury]

Realize that over time the monitor cables can simply come loose on their own due to the weight of the cabling or because of other cables hanging down on them so it's always good to double and triple check those and completely eliminate that possibility for sure or you will kick yourself later on.

Here is another simple thing to try that has solved monitor problems before... actually I did this as recently as last week on a Mac Mini that was having problems receiving the correct signaling from a KVM switch after a power outage. Shut down the Mac Mini and then unplug the monitor from it's power source for a minute. Plug the monitor power back in and then restart the Mac Mini.

The signaling sometimes goes wrong to the monitor after an OS update (like a Windows update) or after switching display states from the MacOS settings to Windows settings or visa versa. This could require the monitor's video detection settings need to be refreshed similar to rebooting a computer. I used to see this problem all the time with Windows OS based computers. Since I mostly use Parallels (which usually syncs the right video resolution to the Mac) instead of Bootcamp or a dedicated Windows PC I normally don't see this problem anymore.

If those solutions don't work then next I would suspect a Windows driver problem or some issue relating to a Windows update. I have read that bad RAM can also cause video problems since the Intel chipset based Mac Mini shares part of it's system RAM resources for video RAM.

So far we've updated the drivers and cleaned out the fans and have had 0 problems. I'm going to keep this in mind though if the problem crops back up.