Random horizontal lines, screen freezing, can't click on the desktop...

[big_malk]

Recently I've noticed a lot of these random lines appearing horizontally across my screen. It usually happens in Safari, but the one here was in Fireworks. The thing is though, I took a screen shot of another one but the line wasn't there in the screen shot. Could this be a graphics card issue? I have a ATI Radeon X1900 XT.

Also, twice in the last few days my screen has completely frozen. I couldn't move my mouse, nothing moved on screen, but I could still control iTunes fine with my keyboard... so I guess the computer had completely frozen, just the graphics. The only way I could get out of this was just to hold the power button till it went off

After the second crash like that, when it'd started up again, it crashed again. Almost the same, but the mouse was still moving. After about 10 minutes waiting for it all to come back to life I killed the power again, fine after that.

Any ideas on what could cause all this?

 

[CJRhoades]

I've experienced similar "horozontal lines" on both my TiBook (but its having other display problems) and my MBP. Not sure what causes it but its only happened about 3 times and only lasts a few seconds so I'll just live with it.

 

[big_malk]

I've experienced similar "horozontal lines" on both my TiBook (but its having other display problems) and my MBP. Not sure what causes it but its only happened about 3 times and only lasts a few seconds so I'll just live with it.

I expect this is a bit of a non-issue, but the fact they don't show up in screen captures makes me consider it could be a hardware issue?

And I'm not happy with all these freezes and crashes, I know mac aren't perfect, but I seem to have more problems than most people

 

[CJRhoades]

Sounds like you just got one of the "bad" macs. Just take it into an apple store and (hopefully you have apple care) tell them your problem. They might fix it or give you a replacement. Of course if you just read this site it will sound like there's allot of "bad" macs, but this is where everybody brings their problems.

 

[big_malk]

Sounds like you just got one of the "bad" macs. Just take it into an apple store and (hopefully you have apple care) tell them your problem. They might fix it or give you a replacement. Of course if you just read this site it will sound like there's allot of "bad" macs, but this is where everybody brings their problems.

I bought this Mac from eBay a year ago this month, and I've just double checked the Apple support site with my serial number, and it's no longer covered.

I hate to admit this, but I had a slight loss of concentration a few months ago when I was rearranging my desk, and plugged one of my displays into my printer power brick, it popped and smoked a little When I plugged it in properly and it didn't work, I'd given it up for dead (and slapped myself for stupidity).
But I plugged it in again a few days later and it's worked perfectly since! It crossed my mind this could be coming back to haunt me, but since some of the lines do show in screen shots (and some don't) I'm more confused than worried...

 

[CJRhoades]

Doubt this is true, but maybe the person who put the notebook up on ebay experienced the same thing and sold it before it got any worse. Just a theory....

 

[big_malk]

Well it's a fine theory and I bet there's plenty people who would do that and 'forget' to mention issues like these!

It's actually a Mac Pro though, I don't know where you got it being a notebook from lol

 

[CJRhoades]

Well it's a fine theory and I bet there's plenty people who would do that and 'forget' to mention issues like these!

It's actually a Mac Pro though, I don't know where you got it being a notebook from lol

Oops.. this entire time I thought you were talking about a MacBook Pro...

 

[cms2]

My mbp has recently started doing something similar to what you've described, although my line is vertical, and always in the same place (just to the left of the apple menu) and comes and goes. It doesn't show up in screenshots. Over the past week or two I've been experiencing freezes where nothing moves, including the mouse.

This machine has been a little quirky since I bought it back in August, but I just thought (forgive me, apple fans) apples might be a bit prone to locking up as it was my first apple product other than an iPod or two. Now with this line, I'm starting to think that maybe my graphics card or something related might have been faulty the whole time. This whole time I've just been telling myself "well, at least it's more fun to use than windows, if more prone to locking up..."

I have the extended apple care so I might take it in soon... is there a definitive test they can run to tell me what the problem is?

 

[big_malk]

I have the extended apple care so I might take it in soon... is there a definitive test they can run to tell me what the problem is?

There is a hardware test you can run from the disk that came with your MBP, it'll say on the disk which key to hold down while your MBP starts up (with the disk in) and it'll test your memory etc.

I'm not sure if it tests graphics cards, or if it does, how well it does. Sounds like you do have a hardware issue though if the line is always in the same place, I'd definitely get it looked at since it's under warranty.

 

[big_malk]

Here's another one

This line just appeared on visual hub, it wasn't right the way across but extended as I dragged the cursor to take the screen shot. It stopped at the end of the visual hub window, so it'd guess it''s a software issue not hardware...?

 

[big_malk]

I don't know if this is the same issue, or a totally different one...
but I occasionally can't select icons on my desktop. I can drag a selection box, but nothing happens, when I click (or right-click) on icons nothing happens. There no selection being made at all.
Other than that, Finder worked fine; I opened a window, navigated to the desktop folder and it would fine. A while later the desktop issue seemed to fix itself.

Also, when I was typing on here in another thread, there was a triangular section of the text box flickered for a few seconds, it looked like what was behind the window was flickering to the front, but I don't really know for sure, it could have just been random colour pixels, I didn't get a good look

All these little graphical bugs are really annoying!!

I'd hugely appreciate any help!!