Macbook Pro Spotlight Flicker Question

[xxnoelziexx]

I bought a brand new Macbook Pro for my partner's birthday.
She loves it but pointed out a problem, she gets a problem with spotlight.
Everytime she types a letter she gets graphical glitches it looks horrible. I have tested it on my friends macbook and his spotlight works perfect.

What do you lot think I should do?
I took Applecare out when I bought the laptop it is 1 month old.

 

[ViciousShadow21]

reset PRAM if that doesnt work archive and reinstall the OS

 

[xxnoelziexx]

reset PRAM if that doesnt work archive and reinstall the OS

Thanks for the advice

Just tried reinstalling the OS and did a complete erase install and problem is still there. I have booked it in tomorrow to see genius bar, Will call Apple in the morning as I did spent just over £4000 for two machines, waited month and half for them to be delivered. I will hope they will do a replacement but my problem is that I am few days out of the 28 days since having it. My Partner's birthday was only a week ago Fingers crossed Apple will sort us out.

 

[mookkoo]

Thanks for the advice

Just tried reinstalling the OS and did a complete erase install and problem is still there. I have booked it in tomorrow to see genius bar, Will call Apple in the morning as I did spent just over £4000 for two machines, waited month and half for them to be delivered. I will hope they will do a replacement but my problem is that I am few days out of the 28 days since having it. My Partner's birthday was only a week ago Fingers crossed Apple will sort us out.

Did you get the problems resolved?
I'm having the same problems, every time I type a letter, there is flickers in the spotlight, I doubt that this is hardware related though, I'm guessing it's software, but since reinstalling doesnt work for you, I doubt that it'll work for me.
Please let me know if you have the solution, or if I probably have to bring it to apple store.

 

[mookkoo]

Does anyone else experience this?

 

[NewZealandMatt]

Yes, mine is doing this too - BTO UMBP 15" 3.06 w/ 2GB RAM, arrived just today. Works fine connected to power adapter - but running off battery, spotlight glitches while typing.

This glitching also affects Safari - especially sites with fine horizontal lines (like this forum!) - the effect is similar to screen tearing on games when Vsync is off. Have tried resetting PRAM, and no change. Seems to affect both 9400 and 9600 GPUs when running off battery. Problem with the new MBP battery and these Nvidia GPUs perhaps?

REALLY hoping this is software related ... bought a new iMac two months back that was faulty, just exchanged a faulty iPhone 3G, keyboard on my first gen MacBook Air seems to be failing, now this ... will really not be happy if another faulty machine has to go back to Apple!

Anyone else with the same problem?

 

[xxnoelziexx]

reinstalled software changed hard drive to 3 different SSD drives and still had problem. Contacted Apple and they said it was a faulty graphics chip.

I was just outside my 28 days policy and they replaced my unit for a brand new one. The new one is working perfect

Really happy with Apple,

 

[mookkoo]

reinstalled software changed hard drive to 3 different SSD drives and still had problem. Contacted Apple and they said it was a faulty graphics chip.

I was just outside my 28 days policy and they replaced my unit for a brand new one. The new one is working perfect

Really happy with Apple,

Did your old mbp's spotlight stop flickering when it's plugged in? Or does it happen all the time?

 

[xxnoelziexx]

Yes it would go away when it was plugged in but when on power it was setup for Better performance and use better video card. My new unit does not flicker on or off power now. Well my partners unit doesn't lol

 

[mookkoo]

Thanks for the quick reply. Well, mine doesn't make a difference it's is on 9400 or 9600, it still flickers, as long as it's not plugged in. Maybe I should bring it in for a quick check-up. Are you in US?

 

[SilentCrs]

reset PRAM if that doesnt work archive and reinstall the OS

Can someone tell me why "reset PRAM" is still considered the cure-all for all things not at all affected by PRAM. It's pretty clear this person either has an OS issue, nVidia driver issue (which would be corrected by Apple) or maybe a font issue. In any case, nothing involving resetting PRAM would fix it.

It's like the people who still refer to the motherboard as a "logic board". It's a motherboard. Apple is using x86 parts -- get with the x86 terminology.

 

[xxnoelziexx]

Thanks for the quick reply. Well, mine doesn't make a difference it's is on 9400 or 9600, it still flickers, as long as it's not plugged in. Maybe I should bring it in for a quick check-up. Are you in US?

I am in the UK bought Applecare are on both units. I would take it in for a checkup this is not normal. I knew mine would be hardware as a complete reinstal no updates. Partners machine originallys shipped with 10.5.6 new system has 10.5.7. Hope you get it sorted

 

[Jottle]

Noticed this issue on mine as well

 

[NewZealandMatt]

*Sigh*

I guess I'm calling Apple this morning. The worst thing about living in New Zealand and being an Apple customer is that you only have phone support available - there's no genius bar I can take my machine to. So it's back on the phone to run Apple's diagnostics tests (reset PRAM etc), call back, run hardware test overnight, call back, etc etc ... then finally in a week, they'll agree to exchange.

Anyone think this might be fixable in software down the line? I sent my iMac back to Apple a couple of months ago with the ATI freezing issue, which they eventually told me on the phone was a hardware fault - and literally 24 hours after TNT picked up the machine, a software fix appeared online! Really reticent to go through that again with this, as this MBP is perfect in every other way ...

Glad to hear the OP got their machine exchanged and that the new one is working fine.

 

[MKnight]

It appears to be a bug introduce with 10.5.7. I did a clean install and updated to 10.5.7 and it only seems to happen with the new update.

 

[Jottle]

It appears to be a bug introduce with 10.5.7. I did a clean install and updated to 10.5.7 and it only seems to happen with the new update.

Did you check this on battery power and plugged in? All of us only see this issue on battery.

 

[mookkoo]

Anyway, I went to the Apple Store in Toronto today, and, out of 12ish macbook pro (both 13 and 15"), only one that behaves normally (or abnormally in this case ), and that's the one with removable batteries and 9C85 display. I'm guessing that this might be the one that has 10.5.6, since I remember comparing the display on this computer with a 9C84 display before 10.5.6 was released.

Apple Genius said that this a known issues with the software and they are working on the update for it. Although xxnoelziexx experience definitely says the opposite.

 

[NewZealandMatt]

Thanks for the update Mookkoo - wish I had an Apple store here where I could do the same. So would you mind just clarifying for me - EVERY UMBP you saw with non-removable battery (i.e. the WWDC update) had the flickering on Spotlight when running off battery?

 

[mookkoo]

Hey Matt,
that's correct, all the new macbook pro in the apple store have flickering spotlight when unplugged. The one that didn't flicker was the 1st gen unibody with 9C85, BUT, i also tried another 1st gen unibody, and that one had a flickering spotlight. Mine is a 1st gen unibody, FYI.

 

[NewZealandMatt]

Hey Matt,
that's correct, all the new macbook pro in the apple store have flickering spotlight when unplugged. The one that didn't flicker was the 1st gen unibody with 9C85, BUT, i also tried another 1st gen unibody, and that one had a flickering spotlight. Mine is a 1st gen unibody, FYI.

Thanks, that's certainly pretty odd. My business partner just received the same machine as I have and his has the same issue ... so I'm going to hang onto mine and hold out hope this is software related. It doesn't affect usage really anyway - but would be a worry if it was indicative of a larger problem.

Fingers crossed a software update is forthcoming!

 

[Smoothie]

I just tried typing in the spotlight dialog box while my new MBP is on battery. Each time I type a letter, the window is redrawn as the search is refined. This seems like normal behavior to me. Is this what you mean by flickering?

 

[mookkoo]

I just tried typing in the spotlight dialog box while my new MBP is on battery. Each time I type a letter, the window is redrawn as the search is refined. This seems like normal behavior to me. Is this what you mean by flickering?

Yeah, something like that, the spotlight blinks that you can see the background.

 

[Jottle]

Yeah, something like that, the spotlight blinks that you can see the background.

I'm pretty sure this only happens on spotlight. I haven't seen anything else odd on other applications. It would be great if someone could check other system wide graphics that get redrawn like this. The glitch is very minor, but should be at least verified as a known issue not related to hardware.

 

[PDE]

I helped a friend set up a new macbook and it had this. My 3-month old MBP unibody also exhibits this sometimes, but not all the time. I'm pretty confident that it's a simple software bug that will be addressed soon....I hope.

 

[NewZealandMatt]

I'm pretty sure this only happens on spotlight. I haven't seen anything else odd on other applications. It would be great if someone could check other system wide graphics that get redrawn like this. The glitch is very minor, but should be at least verified as a known issue not related to hardware.

I also have glitching while scrolling in Safari, like horizontal ripples across the window. This seems to be intermittent though - or at least, to vary in severity. But again, it's only on battery - performance using the power adapter is flawless.

Spoke to Apple yesterday, as I wanted to acknowledge within my 14-day right of return window just in case I decided to do anything about it - and they asked me to take the machine into an authorised service provider to rule out a hardware fault. Still in two minds about it as a) it's minor and b) it sounds like every machine does this to some degree ...

I caused a similar effect once using CoolBook on my first-gen MBA, when I dropped the voltage too low. I wonder ... is the new battery perhaps not quite supplying the MBP GPUs with enough power? I'm sure someone more technically-inclined could comment on that ... but if something like that is to blame, then surely an update could fix it ...