MBP Display Fault

Marky_Mark · Jan 27, 2015

I have a display issue that I'm running out of ideas for.

It's a 2007 15" MBP C2D A1211 (yeah, yeah - can't afford a new one)

This is the issue:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/markclothier/16196273970/in/set-72157650105055558/

So far, I have tried:

Manipulating the hinge - no change
Applying moderate 'diagnostic' pressure to top case and hinge area - no change
Plugging into an external display - same psychadelic visuals
PRAM reset - no change
SMC reset - no change
Removed/reseated RAM, swapped sockets - no change
Booted from alt. system disk - no change
Run Apple Hardware Test - "no trouble found" - screenshot :

https://www.flickr.com/photos/markclothier/16196273280/in/set-72157650105055558/

Any ideas? For reasons too pathetic to go into here, I had to glue down the top case several years ago so I don't really want to open it up unless I need to. I don't know enough about what the different display components do and how they interrelate. Is it a GPU issue? (Is this on board the CPU? not sure). Would reseating the display cable help? I'm not clear on whether this cable feeds both the internal display and external DVI port, which is why the issue is replicated...or are they fed separately? What does an invertor do? If I know what to order from iFixit, I'm comfortable doing the required repairs.

It "feels" like it might be RAM-related but a new pair of DIMMS will cost 25 notes and I'm not prepared to spend that on a gamble. Reason for the gut feel is that if the laptop is left for long enough, various screen areas 'refresh' and the interference clears from that zone, such as here, where the login account names are visible while the rest is mush:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/markclothier/15761490444/in/set-72157650105055558

Any thoughts would be welcome. I've gone as far as I can. What I don't want to do is buy a new lappie as it's cost prohibitive. This is perfectly adequate for my modest surfing and Word needs if it can somehow be resurrected!

Thanks
Mark

doynton · Jan 31, 2015

I had similar screen issues with my 2007 MBP. I resolved it by disabling ATI Graphics as described in this thread

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2570597?tstart=0

Quote

*In order to still use your computer, one of the thing you can do is remove the ATIRadeon Drivers.*
*What I did is to save it on my external Hard Drive in order to be able to replace it later.*
*The GPU is simply desactivate and all the job is done by the Dual Core.*
*Of course it is not so good as expected and HD movies lag to much but at least you can use your computer and wait for Apple and AMD to find something and change it for free.*

*Here is the list of the file to delete :*
* /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000.kext*
* /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000GA.plugin*
* /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000GLDriver.bundle*
* /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX1000VADriver.bundle*
* /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX2000.kext*
* /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX2000GA.plugin*
* /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX2000GLDriver.bundle*
* /System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX2000VADriver.bundle*
Click to expand...

You could try it - you can always copy back the files you delete if it doesn't help. Strangely I am running Windows 10 in bootcamp and never had the issue there so I'm not sure if it is hardware but on the OSX side deleting all these ATI files stopped the weird screen artefacts (at the cost of worse graphics but I don't really care about that).

Marky_Mark · Feb 2, 2015

Thanks for this, I'll give it a try.

MBP Display Fault

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