Logic board issue, possibly?

[cc0508]

Sigh. My MacBook (my first Mac ever, period) was bought new in October '09. I opted out of AppleCare, so nothing is under warranty any more.

In the past three or four days, I've noticed that occasionally photos are looking like negatives, they have strange columns, weird little blocks of color, etc. I thought it was a browser issue, but it's happened on Chrome and Firefox (however, if a certain picture is looking strange in one browser, when I past the url into a different browser, it's fine). Here are some examples that I've grabbed today:

I'm not going to pretend that I have a ton of knowledge in this area, but Google is indicating that it could be a logic board issue. However, my IT brother-in-law thinks that because it's not every image, it's more likely a corrupted driver. However, he's a PC guy so he's just taking a guess. For what it's worth, I've done a PRAM reset with no results.

Has anyone encountered this? I'm just sick at the thought that I'm going to have to buy for a new logic board. Ugh.

 

[cc0508]

Is this a dumb question or just one that nobody has the answer to? I really don't want to call Apple Support if it's something that I can fix myself!

 

[StockDC2]

Good news is that if the problem is occurring only when you are viewing pictures, your logic board is fine. You should try running a video in youtube and see if you see any artifacts. If you can't, your onboard GPU is fine (which means that your logic board is fine).

What GPU does your Macbook have?

 

[cc0508]

My GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M.

I'm not seeing anything while running videos, and also I'm not seeing anything when I open pictures on my hard drive - just when I look at pictures online.

 

[TheGdog]

My GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M.

I'm not seeing anything while running videos, and also I'm not seeing anything when I open pictures on my hard drive - just when I look at pictures online.

I think it is a software issue. You can reinstall the system components by inserting your snow leopard disk and installing without wiping the hard drive. Back up your stuff anyway in case something goes wrong.

 

[cc0508]

Well, I repaired the hard drive and then I reinstalled the os, and no change. However, I haven't noticed it happening to NEW pictures, just to same pictures - almost all on Facebook, coincidentally. Still no artifacts appearing on videos on YouTube, or on photos/videos that I open from my hard drive.

Any other thoughts? Should I try to reinstall my browsers?

 

[sporadicMotion]

Well, I repaired the hard drive and then I reinstalled the os, and no change. However, I haven't noticed it happening to NEW pictures, just to same pictures - almost all on Facebook, coincidentally. Still no artifacts appearing on videos on YouTube, or on photos/videos that I open from my hard drive.

Any other thoughts? Should I try to reinstall my browsers?

Are you running any plugins with your browser? If you already reinstalled the entire OS then the browsers have already been replaced.

 

[cc0508]

On Chrome, I was running Missing E, StumbleUpon, and AdBlock. I disabled them all and restarted the browser without any luck.

I've noticed that if I refresh a few times on a messed up photo, it changes. For example:

 

[cc0508]

Sorry to double post!

After reinstalling the os, I checked to see if there were any software updates available. There was a large file, over 1gb, and it took FOREVER to update. After that, those certain messed up pictures were still messed up, but if I refreshed enough times, it stopped. That gave me the bright idea to just obliterate all of my info on Chrome (which I haven't done in AGES, since I don't share this computer with anyone). Being that it seemed to be a web-only issue, I should have done that before anything else, probably. >.< At any rate, between the update and purging all my cookies and whatnot, it does appear to have solved the problem.