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MacBook Pro WTH?!?!? Help! No video . . .

M

Mr_Ed

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 10, 2004
1,157
2,293
North and east of Mickeyland
My g/f woke up this morning to find her Santa Rosa MacBook Pro had no video. Nothing on the LCD. We tried external video with the same results. We know the computer itself boots b/c it shows up on our network and I can access her public folder from my computer. I tried rebooting different ways, including zapping PRAM with no results.

This computer is maybe 2 years old!! It doesn't even get used during the day since everyone is at work. Any suggestions?
 
If it has the 8600 cardin it, take it to an Apple store and they will replace the logic board for free regardless of apple care. Its a known dodgy card *touch wood mine is still ok *
 
Take it to Apple

Looks like your video card is shot, and if it does have the 8600 GT card in it, then they will replace it for free, for up to 3 years after purchase. Just take it to any Apple Authorized Repair Centre and they will take care of it for you. Its an easy process, got it done on mine about a month ago, and it took them 3 days to get the part.
 
yikes....looks like my very 'expensive time bomb' is still ticking..i hope the card in my MBP conks out before the 3 years are up....
silly sounding question, but does anyone know how to conk out the 8600M GT?:confused:
 
NC MacGuy said:
Hardcore video gaming. The more graphic intensive the better.

Play it hard and fast.
Click to expand...

dont forget to take breaks often it is the heat cycling that actually breaks the card. get the card as hot as you can the let it cool off for about 20 minutes and repeat.
 
NC MacGuy said:
Hardcore video gaming. The more graphic intensive the better.

Play it hard and fast.
Click to expand...

My first 8600 crashed after about 7 months.
Now I'm on my 20th month, and I do game 10-20 hrs a week. Still running fine, so I wouldn't bet on killing the card thru gaming if you haven't started at least 20 months ago.
 
Thanks to everyone for the quick replies. I'll have her try the brightness thing, but the fact we also got no video on the DVI port is not a good sign.

Now that some of you mention, I do recall reading about issues with some NVidia GPUs. The machine does have the 8600 in it. If we can have it replaced for free, that would be awesome! She already has an appointment at a local Apple store for Wednesday.

Thanks again for the tips!
 
cluthz said:
My first 8600 crashed after about 7 months.
Now I'm on my 20th month, and I do game 10-20 hrs a week. Still running fine, so I wouldn't bet on killing the card thru gaming if you haven't started at least 20 months ago.
Click to expand...

The idea is to stress the card to see if it will fail. The failure rate isn't 100% so obviously your 20 month old card is fine. As another poster noted, it's the heat cycling of the card that causes the failures.

One way to truly test that is to run it hot as heck, back off run normally, run hot as heck, back off run normally for a bunch of cycles. Gaming will heat up the GPU rather quickly and is a good test to see if it fails.

If you run without ever stressing the GPU you may never see a failure. Then again you may next time you boot up. That is why Apple didn't recall 100% of the affected units.
 
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