What is this.. Stuck Pixels?

[WillphotoN]

LCD black spots

I too have black spots 'behind' the LCD screen on my 15" MacbookPro.
I first noticed them about 8 months after I bought it. I thought at first they were bad pixels that wouldn't be covered under warranty.
They've gotten worse. When the DVD drive was replaced under AppleCare in August 2007 I asked that they also clean the back of the screen. They kept my MacBook for almost a month but did nothing about the screen. I put up with it, but now it's making it impossible to work in Photoshop.

A previous writer included a photo from his phone. Here are three photos I just took with my Nikon and Micro 60mm lens. They show that the black spots are not burned out pixels, they are 'behind' the screen- (they focus farther away than the red green blue pixel pattern).
I think they are mold spots. They're mostly center of the screen, the area that would cool off the quickest allowing any water vapor to condense. (I live in Southern California-very dry). Dust would move around and be worse near an entry point at the edges.
The photos are not copyrighted, feel free to share them. The school district Apple tech I spoke to didn't think the screen could be 'opened' for cleaning and that I'd have to replace it. Thanks for any thoughts and suggestions
W

 

[cmcconkey]

If it is still under applecare than get it back to them ASAP. The probable reason that they didn't do anything the last time was that the Genius didn't put it in the work order.

When mine went in for the screen problem I had them tack on a couple of things and when he gave me my print out they weren't on there so I had him revise the work order to include the other things that were wrong with my PowerBook. The great thing is that I am about to have to take my PowerBook back to them because of some interesting "power" issues, if my processor hits anywhere above 90% for an extended amount of time it will kill a fully charged battery in less than 10 min.


Christopher

 

[Fracture]

here is a fix

ive had this problem too, and i found something that fixes it
http://www.jscreenfix.com/basic.php

check it out, it fixes burn ins and stuck pixels!
worked for me

 

[Heston]

I too have black spots 'behind' the LCD screen on my 15" MacbookPro.
I first noticed them about 8 months after I bought it. I thought at first they were bad pixels that wouldn't be covered under warranty.
They've gotten worse. When the DVD drive was replaced under AppleCare in August 2007 I asked that they also clean the back of the screen. They kept my MacBook for almost a month but did nothing about the screen. I put up with it, but now it's making it impossible to work in Photoshop.

A previous writer included a photo from his phone. Here are three photos I just took with my Nikon and Micro 60mm lens. They show that the black spots are not burned out pixels, they are 'behind' the screen- (they focus farther away than the red green blue pixel pattern).
I think they are mold spots. They're mostly center of the screen, the area that would cool off the quickest allowing any water vapor to condense. (I live in Southern California-very dry). Dust would move around and be worse near an entry point at the edges.
The photos are not copyrighted, feel free to share them. The school district Apple tech I spoke to didn't think the screen could be 'opened' for cleaning and that I'd have to replace it. Thanks for any thoughts and suggestions
W

Jesus, man, that sucks. Is it happening near the Apple logo? I remember having washed out marks in the center of my powerbook and sent it back - it was a widespread problem and they fixed it almost immediately.

 

[F. Hopper]

I see this thread is a bit old but I thought I would share my findings with the community..

I recently purchased a refurb macbook pro to find this issue myself, LOTS of dust between the glass LCD and the backlight assembly.. That being said I used it for some time until the dust became very annoying.

However, I have been able to successfully remove nearly all of the dust from the screen. It's a tedious process that requires a steady hand, but not all that difficult, the biggest pain was getting the lcd itself unglued from the frame.

After that I had to carefully free the tape on the left and right side of the screen that holds the metal frame (while paying critical attention to not disturb the top of the screen where all the hair thin connections from the control board to the lcd panel are, break one of those contacts and you've got a new pretty stripe going down the screen). There also appears to be some sort of connector tabs on the right hand side of the screen under the tape which one may want to avoid excessive contact with, usually that's where I would expect to see another board connected to control the rows of the display grid but it appears to be not the case in this 15" screen. Afterward there's a few snaps on both sides that keep the metal frame around the screen that need to be freed.

Next to avoid any chance of disturbing the connections on top of the screen I flipped the screen over as it would be if you were actually using it, then pulled the metal frame up just enough to where i could lift the glass panel up to where i could get in with a soft clean paintbrush to sweep out the crud on the screen, I would recommend having someone hold the metal frame as its rather difficult to do by yourself and actually clean it.

I've noticed that the dirt can be rather stuck well on the screen and may need a piece of clean cloth to remove some of it.. There are also a few layers of translucent film between the screen and backlight that may trap dust.

I've theorized that some stresses may cause the wide screen to bend apart in the middle during use and create a low pressure area under the screen, pulling in air and any dust laying around in the case, then when its unstressed that dust gets pressed against the glass and becomes caked on. That being said it may not be a bad idea to seal up the bottom of the screen with some thin tape before re-inserting it in the notebook..