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Vertical lines covering half of my display

bobbytomorow

bobbytomorow

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 10, 2007
432
23
Left Coast
My 2008 Penryn White Macbook siplays vertical lines and or vertical grey/black bars on 60% of the display. This happens from when it is powered on until and including when you arrive at desktop. The space the lines occupy does not increase or shrink, they have covered the area from the moment the problem arose.

it is not the common line issue that a Tiger update solved since this Macbook came with Leopard pre-installed. The lines are still there with the hard drive removed and they are still there when I booted a live Ubuntu CD, so I have ruled out software being the cause. Also I have ruled out inverter because I would not be getting any backlighting.

So....

To me that leaves:
-The LCD display panel itself (although there is no physical damage and it has never been dropped)
-The display data cable that connects LCD to the logic board
-GPU

Any thoughts, tips or experience on this? I currently have it completely disassembled and I am not afraid to try anything ;)

Here is a pic

 
I would guess that it is the LCD, then the cable, and lastly the GPU. Just from my experience, a bad GPU will leave you with a lit sleep light and a black display, a bad cable/connection will leave you with a lit white screen, and a damaged LCD will leave you with what your picture shows.
 
i would suspect a bad lcd. Use the dvi and output the video to another external lcd screen and see if you can see the desktop okay. If you can see the desktop fine on an external lcd, I would replace the lcd.
 
I would bet my kitty that it's the LCD. Everyone wants it to be the cable because it's cheaper, but it never is. And the GPU on that machine is bulletproof, unlike the nonsense that went into the A1226/A1260 machines.

For future reference, removing the clamshell & inverter cover are unnecessary for this process.
 

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I'm positive it's a bad LCD. This is a classic symptom. Sometimes they just go bad for no apparent reason, no physical damage necessary.
 
Matthew Yohe said:
Could it have something to do with the fact that you've dismantled the screen?
Click to expand...

haha i thought that was very funny

but back to your problem.
im no expert with computer problems but my mum had a very similar problem with a toshiba (yes i know toshiba) except the bars where smaller and more on screen but i found out it was a problem with the actual display
 
I replaced a cracked MacBook screen last year and when I put the new screen in, I had the exact same lines. What I did was disconnect the LCD connector, then I did an SMC reset and the screen started working fine again. Hope that helps.
 
Ok fellas I replaced the display and all is well, I tried a different cable, inverter, etc...and you guys were right it was the panel itself that was shot

Awesome, thanks a lot guys :D
 
I was given a MacBook that has the exact same issue, although in its case, no image would show up on the screen until about 20-30 seconds after the famous BONG sound. So presumably, it would show up at the login screen. As you can see in my sig that I have my own MacBook Pro, and I just took on this MacBook as a project.

I had a 2007 MacBook before my MBP, so I had some spare parts when I took on this project. I swapped video cables, and inverter boards. Nada. Nothing worked. I decided not to put much money into this, because it was in bad shape, so I just separated the entire display assy, put a magnet over the sleep sensor, and took the Airport antennas out of the display assembly. I have it hooked up to my KVM switch and I use it in conjunction with my G5. I have like 5 MagSafe adapters, so I just left one at my desk so I could use it as a desktop.

Here's a pic. It is very similar to the OP's pic.

DSCN0807.jpg


Edit: also, it is a 2.16GHz Mid-2007 White MacBook with a C2D processor.
 
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