Really weird screen problem!

Discussion in 'Mac Basics and Help' started by stoid, Jan 28, 2007.

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  1. stoid, Jan 28, 2007

    stoid macrumors 601

    stoid

    Joined:
    Feb 17, 2002
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    So long, and thanks for all the fish!
    #1
    I came back to my PowerBook (and external 23inch ACD) and both screens had these weird yellow patterns overlaying the display. A restart fixed the problem, but I'm wondering if it is hardware or software related. I would guess that it's software because it shows up on the screenshot, and restarting fixed it. I freaked out at first, because I thought that my graphics card was going bad.

    Anyone else ever had this issue?
     

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  2. Makosuke, Jan 28, 2007

    Makosuke macrumors 603

    Joined:
    Aug 15, 2001
    Location:
    The Cool Part of CA, USA
    #2
    If a restart fixed it, it's probably software. I did have something somewhat similar to that happen, but in my case it was, in fact, a hardware problem. It did NOT clear up after a restart, though.

    One tip: Just because it shows up in screenshots does NOT mean it's software--I made that same mistaken assumption. Apparently when you take a screenshot in OSX it grabs whatever is in the graphic card's memory and writes it to disk. If that data is corrupt because of bum hardware then it'll show in the screenshot.

    I had double confirmation of this, in fact--the 9800 in my G5 tower went out abruptly in a very similar way to that, and the garbage showed up in screenshots even though it turned out to unquestionably be hardware (the hardware test CD flagged it). The replacement Apple sent (a refurb or pull I assume) was actually slightly funky as well (had these little diagonal lines during 3D rendering), and those also showed up in screenshots.
     
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