MBP bad video card

[fishimedic]

Greetings all,

I haven't had to ask for help from these forums in quite sometime, so is well. Here's the situation. A friend of mine has a MBP that was giving him 'screen problems'. He called Apple and they told him the video card was going bad. Well eventually his screen is now black. (No warranty at time of purchase, kicking himself now) What I'm wondering is...is there anyway to get into this computer? remotely? Would an external monitor work? I can't think of how to get into it to allow it to be remotely accessed. Wouldn't you need a monitor at first to allow the access (permissions, etc)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

fishinmedic

 

[mac2x]

There should be a year of AppleCare even if you don't buy more. Has it been more than a year since he purchased the computer?

If the MBP is a unibody that has two video cards, only one might be dead, but I have no idea how you could get into System Preferences to change to the other. Perhaps there is a 'back door' way of doing this, I don't know.

 

[fishimedic]

MBP is older that a year, about 3 years old I think. It's his 'work' computer. His company bought it for him (but he didn't get a plan). They will be buying him another soon I think. What he wants be able to use it on a network perhaps as storage, media center type thing (itunes server, etc)

 

[mac2x]

OK, then is probably isn't a unibody. And no, an external monitor will not work if the graphics card is dead.

All the methods I know of for getting into the machine remotely require one to be able to access the machine itself to turn off firewalls, etc.