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cheerios · Mar 31, 2002, 04:39 PM

Ok, last night, I'm merrily surfing the internet in a fevered haze on my new combo drive LCD iMac (I have the cold from hell), and my montitor, spontaneously does this:
screenshot
After about 5 minutes, it went back to normal, and all was well. :shrug: weird, but okay... I went to bed, leaving the computer on as I usually do (the display turns off after 5 min, the hd after half an hr, I don't put it to sleep), and when I get up, I go to check my e-mail... wake up the display, and the backlight turns on, but no image! I held the power button in till it shut down, left it for a few minutes, then booted it again. Oh goodie, the stuff from lastnight is back!
another screenshot
I called apple support, but because I bought through their education division, I have to talk to an education support person. Lucky for me, there aren't any there, today. So, I'm sitting here at my iMac DV, wondering if anyone else has experienced this, or knows what's going on...

edit: turned pics into links, 'cuz they're rather big...

[ 03-31-2002: Message edited by: cheerios ]

Mac Zealot · Mar 31, 2002, 04:50 PM

Welcome to OS X, that's probably a geforce 2 problem, because I have it ever now and then when my G4 has some sort of power problem and i reboot out of it

macthelastredman · Mar 31, 2002, 05:36 PM

thats just freaky...never seen that before...nor would i want to.

Chris Grande · Mar 31, 2002, 05:39 PM

Yea, looks like a Video card problem and not the lcd. I belive there have been other reports of issues like this, anyone? Sorry I can't help, but it doesn't look like the Lcd is having problems since OSX was able to take a screenshot of it.

--
Chris Grande

cheerios · Apr 1, 2002, 05:57 PM

well, called apple's tech support, and after him having me do some basic things, boot off CD, etc, during which NOTHING screen glitch still appeared booting off of OS 9 CD and the hardware test CD, he went off to talk to the engineers. "aw crud" I'm thinkin'... verdict? faulty logic board. Apple's gonna replace it for me, and I don't even have to ship it to em. Just have to bring it into a repair shop down the street.

Happy Cheerios doesn't have to ship her computer to TX!

ckohler · Apr 1, 2002, 06:32 PM

Originally posted by cheerios:
faulty logic board. Apple's gonna replace it for me, and I don't even have to ship it to em.

Sorry to hear about your troubles, Cheerios. I *am* glad to hear they're going to help you get a quick replacement. I feel lucky. I got my 800mhz G4 iMac back in February and it's been perfect. Not a single glitch, missing pixel or anything.

cheerios · Apr 1, 2002, 07:44 PM

eh, better to get this stuff outta the way early... at least it fritzed out on a 3 day weekend w/ no homework... I wasn't sure if I was having fever hallucinations at first... had to have Juan come confirm something was wrong!!

mefogus · Apr 2, 2002, 11:36 AM

Originally posted by cheerios:
Ok, last night, I'm merrily surfing the internet in a fevered haze on my new combo drive LCD iMac (I have the cold from hell), and my montitor, spontaneously does this:
screenshot
After about 5 minutes, it went back to normal, and all was well. :shrug: weird, but okay... I went to bed, leaving the computer on as I usually do (the display turns off after 5 min, the hd after half an hr, I don't put it to sleep), and when I get up, I go to check my e-mail... wake up the display, and the backlight turns on, but no image! I held the power button in till it shut down, left it for a few minutes, then booted it again. Oh goodie, the stuff from lastnight is back!
another screenshot
I called apple support, but because I bought through their education division, I have to talk to an education support person. Lucky for me, there aren't any there, today. So, I'm sitting here at my iMac DV, wondering if anyone else has experienced this, or knows what's going on...

edit: turned pics into links, 'cuz they're rather big...

[ 03-31-2002: Message edited by: cheerios ]

Curious, my new iMac hasn't done this (yet), but my Dell Inspiron Laptop does it once a week for about 5 minutes. It only happens when I wake the computer up.

-m

cheerios · Apr 19, 2002, 02:39 PM

Well... just in case anyone was interested, and to give me an opportunity to rant about computer techs... here's what's happening with my problem...
The guy I talked to at apple, he gave me a phone # and the address of a place to take my computer in, to get the logic board replaced. I took it in last friday (I don't have a car, so it's been waiting on a ride). The guy who took my computer told me that I would have it back by tne next tuesday, wednesday at the latest. ok, fine, no prob. It's the NEXT friday, and I'm getting a bit antsy, so I call them up, and talk to the tech working on my computer.

"Well, I've been trying to reproduce the problem for a week now," he tells me. "I havn't been able to do it. I can't order the part, if I can't reproduce the problem, because it might be the logic board, like Apple thinks, or it might be the LCD itself."

Ooookay... well, where does that leave me?

"Well, I can have it on when you come and get it..."

Wait... you mean you're not gonna fix it!?!

"Well, without being able to reproduce the problem, I can't order the part..."

Well, I promise I wasn't hallucinating... It's not really a "reproducable" problem... it just HAPPENS.

"Oh, they didn't tell me that"

Ok, well, I have a couple screenshots, would that help?

"Ok, e-mail em to me, and I'll forward them to the tech from Apple I've been dealing with..."

Am I overreacting, or do i have a right to doubt this guy has any competance at all?!? ACK! 3 days, they say... 7 later I call, and they've been playing solitaire, or whatever you do, while trying to get an LCD to glitch out! I'm glad i'm not paying for this little fiasco...

edit: grammer? what's that??

[ 04-19-2002: Message edited by: cheerios ]

Mac Zealot · Apr 19, 2002, 07:48 PM

Meh, I'm having a lot of problems like that with apple lately, my most recent being about the sound problems.

If I turn on airport, my sound goes to hell. (I'll post a link to the sound file in a bit)

I'm going to make a couple of samples of that kinda thing (luckily my bro's imac has a good microphone.

if you have an idea, i turn on airport, if I do anything over it sound on my pro speakers (even on the main speaker) starts to drop out like crazy, my USB ports loose power randomly,and usually if I reboot the machine dies in the middle of rebooting.

Yet no matter what apple can't reproduce the problem, after a lot of arguing they decided to replace my computer's logic board next week.

They're full of **** , always take pictures and have solid proof

cheerios · Apr 24, 2002, 07:04 PM

Well, final resolution is my computer is on my desk. The screenshots I sent the tech were evidently enough to get him the go-ahead to replace the logic board. I'm REALLY unimpressed with these guys, though. They reset MY account's password in X, installed the 10.0.4 update, and didn't mention ANY of this to me. Luckily Juan has an account on there with admin privileges, so I was able to get in and reset my password, but I can imagine someone with a little less knowledge... or even only 1 account, being VERY baffled about how to get back into their system! Plus... they SCUFFED IT, and got it all dirty. I don't think I'll ever give that shop any more of my business. There HAS to be someplace better around here.

Macintosh · Apr 24, 2002, 07:07 PM

That sucks! Does it work properly though?

cheerios · Apr 24, 2002, 07:09 PM

so far... the prob was intermittent, so if nothing tweaks out in the next week or so, I'll say, yes, it is fixed.

But, so far, so good!!

BuonRotto · Apr 24, 2002, 07:31 PM

I had a slightly different problem with my new iMac, but alas, it was fixed. Two bad things: monitor cables shorted which meant replacing the monitor and the neck with it, and the pre-installed RAM from MacWarehouse blew out the logic board -- twice. I had it serviced up here (NJ, sorry!) and all is well now. Do you have any RAM installed that could be doing it? Did they check the monitor (tried hooking up a second one and see if a similar problem is there too)?

raferx · Apr 24, 2002, 07:37 PM

Did the hardware test CD give you an error code?

bfyost · Apr 24, 2002, 10:42 PM

hey cheerios, you said they scuffed it and got it all dirty right? my imac died 5 days after i got it and i had to take it to a repair shop and they replaced the logicboard too. mine was all scratched and dirtied up as well. I immediately called apple and told them about it and the registered a complaint about the company and agreed to have all of the plastics (the case) replaced free of charge at another shop. you might want to follow up on it. mine was also making a white sound type of noise coming out of the base whenever any animation happened on the screen.i called apple back and faught with them for 45 min. and finally got them to replace the entire machine with a brand spankin new one. they sent me shipping labels to send the messed up one back and 5 days later i had a new one. If you are persistant you can sometimes get your way, remember, the customer is always right. Get the new plastics man.

cheerios · Apr 25, 2002, 02:37 AM

Originally posted by raferx:
Did the hardware test CD give you an error code?

nope to that, and I don't know about if they checked the LCD w/ another monitor. I don't have one or a cable to check it with, but everything seems to be working okay, aside from the scuff, which happens to be on the border of the LCD, so I think I'm just screwed, there. :-/ Life happens, I would have mucked it up eventually.

thanks for the info on the plastics, I think I'll wait till tomorrow, see what to do about that, after I try to clean it up, I may indeed call apple and complain.