Is My Video Card Dying?

[banjomamo]

Lately I've been seeing some odd things on my screen. The appear randomly and can only be removed if I change the resolution of my screen (I guess thats the closest thing to a degauss button we have these days) but it always comes back within an hour or so. There is nothing that seems to specifically trigger it either. It shows up as blue on a dark color and yellow on light colors (see the images below).

I have an NVIDIA GeForce 7800GT in a 2.5 Ghz Quad PPC Powermac.

This has been going on since about the same time I updated to 10.5.5 but Im not so sure its a software glitch. A part of me is thinking that this is my video card's last gasps for air before it dies. BUT I can take a screenshot of it which makes me question the software aspect. I can only take a screenshot of it when I use the command for taking a shot of the entire screen (Command-Shift-3) and not the command for cropping your shot (Command-Shift-4).

Has anyone else encountered something similar?

Here's what it looks like on a dark background:

And here's what it does on a light background:

 

[oraveno]

Display Problems Mac Book Pro 'Black Screen of Death' plus

I awoke one morning to discover that my Mac Book Pro had the infamous 'Black Screen of Death'. . . I spent at least 6 days solidly researching what it may be and also if I could somehow fix it myself, unfortunately both to no avail. Totally gutted at the prospect I put it into the cupboard and awaited the time that I could afford the mentioned £500 - £600 repair by Apple, replacing the logic board/motherboard etc, as mine is just out of warranty.

A couple of weeks later I made another attempt to fix it and decided that I would attempt to connect with a firewire cable and see if I could possibly do a disk repair from disk utilities. It was wonderful to see my desktop again even though it was through a friends laptop, (Not sure if this can be done from windows to a mac but i'm sure it can) I discovered that through many attempts I managed to get the screen back on by the following method. This method is used everytime the screen goes black which seems to be when I force shut down or sometimes when I use dual monitors.

Before going any further another good place to connect up to before your mac dies again is 'logmein.com' I use this to access my MBP at home from Windows at work and so if you don't fancy the firewire method it is also possible to work on your MBP from that programme.

Black Screen MBP is - A
Connecting Machine is - B

Connect with firewire making A the target disc - On A, boot up holding the 'T' key. This will boot the machine into target mode making it accessible on the B machine.


On B, shut down A in the proper manner, this I have found is the key element to regaining your screen - 'Shutting down properly rather than forcing shut down'.

When A is shut down properly attach an external monitor. Before starting up machine depress the 'Options', 'Command', 'R' and 'P' keys together, when all keys are depressed press the start button, after the initial starting sound your screen should spring back into life.

So after you regain the sacred return of your MBP, back all of your stuff up and then apparently Apple will repair it F.O.C for you upto two years out of warranty as the problem boils down to Nvida's graphics card and Apple acknowledge this now.

Cheers

Amanda

 

[oraveno]

I awoke one morning to discover that my Mac Book Pro had the infamous 'Black Screen of Death'. . . I spent at least 6 days solidly researching what it may be and also if I could somehow fix it myself, unfortunately both to no avail. Totally gutted at the prospect I put it into the cupboard and awaited the time that I could afford the mentioned £500 - £600 repair by Apple, replacing the logic board/motherboard etc, as mine is just out of warranty.

A couple of weeks later I made another attempt to fix it and decided that I would attempt to connect with a firewire cable and see if I could possibly do a disk repair from disk utilities. It was wonderful to see my desktop again even though it was through a friends laptop, (Not sure if this can be done from windows to a mac but i'm sure it can) I discovered that through many attempts I managed to get the screen back on by the following method. This method is used everytime the screen goes black which seems to be when I force shut down or sometimes when I use dual monitors.

Before going any further another good place to connect up to before your mac dies again is 'logmein.com' I use this to access my MBP at home from Windows at work and so if you don't fancy the firewire method it is also possible to work on your MBP from that programme.

Black Screen MBP is - A
Connecting Machine is - B

Connect with firewire making A the target disc - On A, boot up holding the 'T' key. This will boot the machine into target mode making it accessible on the B machine.


On B, shut down A in the proper manner, this I have found is the key element to regaining your screen - 'Shutting down properly rather than forcing shut down'.

When A is shut down properly attach an external monitor. Before starting up machine depress the 'Options', 'Command', 'R' and 'P' keys together, when all keys are depressed press the start button, after the initial starting sound your screen should spring back into life.

So after you regain the sacred return of your MBP, back all of your stuff up and then apparently Apple will repair it F.O.C for you upto two years out of warranty as the problem boils down to Nvida's graphics card and Apple acknowledge this now.

Cheers

Amanda

 

[banjomamo]

Thank you for your post. I appreciate any and all ideas but unfortunately my issue is quite different from yours. I am using a Powermac G5 Quad (a desktop with completely different components than a MBP) and the logic board seems to be running fine. I am able to use it and perform any task I throw at it, I just have these odd squiggled lines that show up on occasion (see links above).