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Hawkeye_a · Jun 30, 2006, 11:54 AM

The strangest thing happened a few minutes ago....i got an imac Core Duo 20" w/ 512MB.... had a few programs opened and was trying to get an XVid play in VLC...out of nowhere...the whole screen goes weird....as in a cream colored screen with vertical bars(as opposed to lines)..i could hear the sound, etc...but the screen was frozen. i had to do restart to get rid of it. Any of you experience the same thing ? is it something i need to be worried about ?

Cheers

Hawkeye_a · Jul 2, 2006, 07:12 AM

anyone have any ideas at all ?

dowNNshift · Jul 2, 2006, 08:45 AM

Did you do the SMC Firmware Update yet?

harrisjamieh · Jul 2, 2006, 08:49 AM

Can you replicate the probelm, or has it not happened since? If it cannot be replicated, forget about it.

Hawkeye_a · Jul 2, 2006, 01:56 PM

Yeah i have all the latest software updates installed (sans 10.4.7)...firmware version 1.1f5.

I havent been able to reproduce the problem....but a friend of mine who was here says it looks like a graphics card error and that it's common in the "pc world". ive never had this happen ever.

So yeah...

ChrisB · Jul 2, 2006, 02:12 PM

Might be a bug related to VLC player and how it's making calls out to the graphics system.

Hawkeye_a · Jul 2, 2006, 02:26 PM

Thought about that. but if it was a software error in VLC wouldnt trying to force quit the application solve it ? i was hitting every key combo to try and get out of VLC< but the screen was just "stuck"

ChrisB · Jul 3, 2006, 11:46 AM

Well remember that, yes, the Mac OS is very solid, but no OS is crash proof. I've had Photoshop CS and Dreamweaver give me the beachball and lock me out of even attempting to bring up the Force Quit window. Any piece of software can crash an OS hard enough to bring it down. Fortunately with the Mac OS, it take's a lot.

That said, it's easier to try to track down a possible software bug first from the vendors of VLC, then explore the graphics card option.

Also, have you taken a look at your system.log file to see if anything is appearing regarding the the crash you're having? It may reference your app, your graphics card driver, or some other completely different conflict that none of us are thinking of.

Hawkeye_a · Jul 10, 2006, 08:30 PM

Thanks for that Chris...im guesing it's the video and VLC cause i havent been able to reproduce it. I did an extended hardware test as well, and nothing came up.

So here's what happened yesterday.....

woke the display from sleep, adjusted the angle....and the bottom half of the display went dim (as though the backlight was off) and the upper half looked fine. I did a restart and reset the PRAM and VRAM (just for thew heck of it), and voila...back to normal. reason to be worried ?

Cheers

ChrisB · Jul 10, 2006, 09:54 PM

It sincerely sounds like something on your logic board is a little squirlly - maybe a voltage regular?? Keep an eye on it. It looks like you may be ok, but if something will fail, it will fail suddenly. Maybe you have a bad section of VRAM.

Hawkeye_a · Jul 11, 2006, 05:23 AM

Just baught Applecare, just in case. Maybe im just nit picking a little....cant seem to reproduce any of these problems...so yeah.

Cheers for the help though