EMac Screen is discolored

I am having an issue with an EMac screen showing spots on the display screen. It gets worse when the mouse clicks on the screen. The discolorations do not go away, but keep getting worse as the computer continues being used. When the computer starts up the Apple logo is normal without any blotches. The screen saver also shows normal on the screen, but when the desktop is in view, the computer is discolored with streaks and spots. Any advice on correcting this issue?

You can use the miniVGA adapter to attach a standard VGA monitor to theeMac. As for the all-in-one design, the eMac was originally intended for the school / educational market only, where having one unit was actually a selling point --- harder for young students to pull things apart, and harder for older students to swipe the parts.
In your place I'd try resetting the NVRAM (a battery-backed memory location that holds key machine settings) and reset Open Firmware (which controls the low-level guts of the Mac). restart holding down the command-option-o-f keys; at the "Welcome to Open Firmware" black text on a white screen type in the following commands and press return after each (case sensitive, no spaces):
reset-nvram
set-defaults
reset-all
The Mac should restart after reset-all (if it doesn't, type mac-boot and press Return)
I'd suspect the video hardware may be failing, except for your detail about things getting worse when the mouse is used and returning to normal on a restart. That suggests some kind of unusual danage to the software drivers for the display. If you have the OS X Install disk that came with the eMac, or a retail OS X Installer that postdates the eMac, you can boot from that disc and open Disk Utility from the Installer menu to run Repair Disk on the hard drive, taking note of any errors reported. The procedure is described in Using Disk Utility and fsck. If the hard drive passes the test, and there's at least 5 GB free space on the hard drive, I'd try the archive and install procedure. You'll likely need the OS X Update Combo 10.2.8 afterwards, unless the OS X Install disc is at 10.2.8 (or you use a retail OS X Installer to update to a leter OS X version a la Gulliver - Tiger Upgrade Guide).

Similar Messages

EMac Screen Shakes

Hey Guys,
My eMac Screen shakes a little if yo look at a corner. It looks like a vibration. The speaker volume thing doesn't work, neither does resetting nvram or PRAM or even changing the resolution.
What can i do?
Oh, i know a lot about macs, but not displays. Can someone tell me what "refresh rate" means?
(just out of curiosity.)
Thanks.

As you no doubt already know, this is a monitor and not a software issue. Prognosis is not good, though I've been able to prolong the life of my monitor by decreasing the refresh rate from Millions to Thousands. This doesn't stop the problem, but it seems to slow it down.
"Refresh rate" is pretty much how it sounds; a higher refresh rate "paints" the image on the monitor at a faster rate. That's why a lower rate might give your monitor a bit more life. I was able to make a monitor with the shakes last six months longer, though your success may vary.

My eMac screen goes grey, with a box appearing instructing me to restart my

My eMac screen goes grey, with a box appearing instructing me to restart my computer. It appears every time we use the machine, sometimes straight after login. Help!

tb8,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Refer to What's a "kernel panic"?. You can examine the /Library/Logs/
panic.log file to get a better idea as to the cause of the kernel panic (if necessary, post the last dozen lines or so for others to offer comments). You may need to do a safe boot (see below) after disconnecting all but the Apple keyboard and mouse to get at the log. If you have access to another Firewire-equipped Mac, you can use FireWire target disk mode to get at the panic log.
A general troubleshooting checklist and references are in Gulliver - kmosx3: MacOS X 10.3: Basic trouble-shooting. As Sherry earlier noted, disconnect all peripherals other than the original Apple keyboard and mouse to isolate the hardware. You can check if third-party add-on software is affecting things by Starting Up in Safe Mode; if that resolves the issue, you'll need to examine what's in /Library/PreferencePanes/ as well as what's listed under Login Items for your account.
If you can't startup in safe mode, you can boot from the OS X Install disk and run Disk Utility> Repair Disk from the Installer menu. If you don't have the Install disk handy, you can start the computer in single-user mode and use the Unix file system check utility fsck. Both procedures are described in Using Disk Utility and fsck.
You can further troubleshoot software issues (once you can get onto the computer) by creating a new troubleshooting administrative account and seeing if the problem disappears, which would indicate a problem with your account preferences. You can use Preferential Treatment to check your account's preferences. If kernel panics recurr when using a particular program, start with the preferences for that program (move the .plist files from /Library/Preferences and/or ~/Users/[username]/Library/Preferences to a holding folder on the desktop and restart or log out/back in, depending on whether the preferences in question are system or user level). Since you're seeing kernel panics shortly after login and not before, a user preference or login item is a likely suspect.
You can use MemTest to check your computer RAM; it's a more exhaustive test than the one built into Apple Hardware Test.
You'll also want to reference the <following User Tips Library links:
F.J. - kmosx: Kernel Panics ? Don't panic too !
<a class="jive-link-external-small" href="http://">http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=121923
a brody - kmosx2: I restart my computer in 4 languages!
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=607410#607410

Emac Screen Dimming Out

Hi, Recently my emac screen started becoming dark after restarting it would remain okay for about an hour before turning dark again. Any suggestions why this is happening.Thanks!

First check your power settings in the prefrence pane to make sure its not doing it.
If not, this is either going to be a CRT issue or an Analog board issue. If this is the case you need to take it to an authorized apple service center in your area for diagnostics and repair.

Emergencey: Emac screen turned black?

my emac screen turned all black but i could hear and the mac was still on so i had to reset and when i turned emac back on the screen was normal, but my desktop settings were erased, why is that and what happened?

mine did the same thing!!!!!!!!!! i just put it into lock mode when it had 60% battery and about 15 seconds later i realized that i wanted to get back on it again and when i pressed the home button it wouldn't light up so i pressed it again and again and i held it down and i've tried holding down the lock button and everything and i've tried charging it, plugging it into the computer and everything!!! itunes won't recognize it and i wanna get back on it!!!! someone help me!!!!!!!!! (and by the way i just bought it, its the 4th one!!!!!!!)

EMac screen flickers, shrinks and shuts down

Purchased eMac 8/02 for ease of use bec I have zero tech ability, yet after reading suggestions from this discussion board, I have:
1. replaced the PRAM battery
2. reset PRAM & NVRAM
3. forced 3 maintainence tasks via terminal and utilities
4. removed power supply from surge protectors in case damaged by spring storm and plugged it directly into outlet
5. power cord appears just fine and is tight
6. ran Hardware Test CD and received messages that NO problems were detected. Logic Board is OK (oh please be true)
7. Safe Booted ino Safe Mode without USB printer and scanner. Now I'm stuck, bec sometimes this works. Been up and running for about five hours and no problems (yet). Yesterday I Safe Booted and it just shut down, once after a while, another time before I even got to log in.
Been working on this problem for days and have lost track of what happens each time and which messages I have read and tried.
Have I missed something? Thank you in advance for any further suggestions beside "putting her down" .. I keep having glimmers of hope when it works as it is doing right now.
eMac 700 MHz G4 Mac OS X (10.2.x) 256MB

Janet in NC,
The severe flickering and shrinking could possiblly be a description of the raster shift problem that troubled early nVidia graphics model eMacs such as the 700 MHz model (if the shrinking is he bottom 1/3 of the display rolling up and the top of the display with the menu bar going off the top of the screen), for which replacement of the IVAD cable is the fix (contacting Apple Customer Relations can usually get reimbursement for that repair cost). Unfortunately, the power cutting off isn't one of the raster shift symptoms; your description is consistinet with a power supply problem. Hopefully the problem will prove to be with the main power supply, which is relatively straightforward to replace, and not the analog/CRT assembly power supply.
When your Mac shuts down, is it a total shutdown (power LED and fans off) or is it the display only that goes dark? If the latter, before taking the eMac in for a repair estimate, if you have access to another Firewire-equipped Mac you can try using FireWire target disk mode to backup your Users folders.
Hopefully you won't need this tip, but if it doesn't make economic sense to repair the eMac (compare the repair estimate to the cost of a Mac Mini and any 17-inch LCD monitor), but if necessary you can ask the repair shop to pull the hard drive for you when they open the eMac chassis. You can then put the hard drive in an external Firewire chassis for around US$30 - $50 or so, and at least recover your user data and get a backup hard drive from it.
p.s. While surge protectors can be damaged in a storm --- most low-end consumer surge outlet are essentially one-shot devices at best --- plugging a computer directly into the wall outlet should be done only as a short-term test of the surge outlet itself.

Emac Screen problem

I have an issue with an Emac 800MHz. When the computer starts up, the screen is blue but when the desktop loads and the dock appears, the screen reverts to black and white. At this point the screen preference pane shows that colours in thousands are in use and even changing between b/w and colors and between the various colour settings makes no difference - any ideas or help would be welcomed.

Macbeard,
Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Check System Preferences > Universal Access > Seeing tab and make sure you don't have the "white-on-black" or "use grayscale" options checked.
(if you accidentally pressed command-option-control-8, that switches to white-on-black.)

I have an emac whose screen is no longer centered so to speak. how would i adjust or reset my old emac screen. it is kind of bent and not centered anymore

how can i adjust my screen back to normal. it is bending/curving. please help

There is not a user-accessible position adjustment as found on TVs and some external monitor.
it is bending/curving
Early eMacs had a problem with a defective video cable (the IVAD cable) that caused image size changes and distortion. I suspect yours has that issue. If so a new cable can fix it, but the one place I'd found that had new, known-good IVAD cables went out of business.
For a test, you can attach an external monitor (requires an adaptor). If the image there is normal, you probably have the cabling problem. Replacing video cables means sticking fingers in areas that carry residual voltages high enough to kill. Definitely not something that is an easy "at home" fix.

Can i use my emac screen to play my x box on?

I want to put my x box next to my mac and was wondering if instead of having another television screen on the table, wether i can put the audio/visual feed from the x box through my emac monitor (my modem is also on the table so i could plug in my xbox live!)
Any advice appreciated

James,
Sorry, the eMac has no video in port (the mini sVGA port is out only).

EMac screen going brown

Hi there.
I have searched this forum trying to find the right answer, but I'm not a hardware guru so I can't really identify my problem. I hope you can help or point me to some relevant posts.
To summarise, over the past few months I have noticed faint brown patches appearing. One of them covers the bottom left handside of the screen and is about 1/3 of the screen size. The other is smaller in the top right handside with an even smaller patch just below the eMac logo at the top. The two largest patches are diagonal and extend to the screen edges. They are present all the time at both start-up and after several hours of the machine running.
As I said, they are very faint, but if I use a blank Keynote presentation or Safari loads a page with a lot of white background, the patches become much more distinct. In general the screen just doesn't seem as crisp as I remember when the eMac was first bought.
The eMac has been used extensively, but not to the point where it is left on 24/7. It has no external speakers and the nearest radio is some distance away in another room.
I have read on here about some eMac's being recalled for display issues but can't find any official notice of this. Mine is a 1Ghz model purchased in 2003. I have also seen in a local computer shop cleaning kits for the internals of CRT monitors. Could the problem be caused by dust and if so how is the best method to remove dust without zapping oneself with a million volts?!
Any help or links would be much appreciated
Regards
Will.

The eMac used to be kept in a conservatory (garden room) which was always relatively cold but until 12 months ago it has been moved into a proper 'indoor' room.
The eMac hasn't had anything new added to it except extra RAM which was added at the start of the year before I was aware of any display problems. The only display related software I have is Teleport but I shouldn't think this would cause screen problems?
The screen hasn't been cleaned with any nasty cleaning agents. If finger prints appear, I use a damp cloth.
Being an environmental guru I do have many energy saving light bulbs, but even as I sit here in the darkness, I can see brown patches.
As far as I'm aware electricity doesn't come into this side of the building, though the eMac sits on the desk directly above the wall socket it plugs into so I might try plugging it in on the other side of the room.
That certainly doesn't sound promising what you quote at the start of your post Mike, but I will look up what nvram means and have a go at resetting it after a thorough backup.
Thanks for your tips.
Will.

Emac screen getting darker with time?

ive had my emac now for a little over a yea...about 14 months to be exact. in may i noticed that the screen was getting considerably darker to the point where i could hardly see anything. so i calibrated it to lighten it up. it worked and then got even brighter and kinda back to normal. well this weekend it got seriously dark again. i recalibrated it again and now its somewhat brighter but the picture is still way to dark and looks like garbage. im very frustrated as i thought that it may just get better with time again as it did in may. any suggestions from anyone would be great!!!

JMVD,
Seems to me that you're quite the Apple expert. I had this problem with my eMac. Since, I am not American or English I hope I can make the problem chrystal clear.
I think I had the same problem with my screen. A few days ago I left my eMac running while not using it. After a while the screen became dark due to the "sleep modus setting" of course. This is not the first time this happens. Only this time after activating the eMac again my screen was so much darker. So of course I changed the screen setting (calibration) at the system preference menu. It improved the brightness of the screen but I noticed that it still was not normal. I said to myself: as long as I can work with it than it would be no problem. But then last night I forgot to shut down my eMac and again the screen got darker. This time I tried to change the setting again. Again the calibration process but I saw that I am using the maximum brightness and I got irritated by the quality of the color. And furthermore if the screen would get darker the next time I already used up the calibration / brightness possibities.
So I went looking for help at the apple site. And I found your discussion. And I just tried the command option o f advise of yours etc etc etc. After the automatic restart only the grey screen (background) with in the centre the apple logo appeared.
Your advice was very simple so I just went for it. I hope I did not erased the whole unit. Please tell me what I should do know. Also I saw the screen (grey back ground / apple logo) was kind of dark. But, I never look at the screen when I start up the eMac. Maybe I am imagining this.
I hope you can help me with this. Unfortunately, I do not have the apple care protection plan.
Thanx.

IMage webcam magnet effect eMac screen?

I am thinking about getting an iMage USB cam for my eMac and want to mount it on the upper face of the case. Does anyone know if it will effect the screen because of its magnetic base?

It might very well warp the display near the magnet. You can test it by getting a magnet off your fridge and put it up in the same area and see how bad it is.
My advice would be to remove the magnet from the base and replace with Velcro or double sided tape instead.
Patrick

EMac screen shaking

Hi
Well recently my family and I moved into an older, but larger house and suddenly my eMac has been having a strange problem. The screen is shaking badly on both sides of the screen and there is no magnetic device around it at all to cause it. However, sometimes it is very bad, while other times it is barely shaking at all. Does anyone know what could be causing this? If there is a problem what should I do?
Thanks in advance
~Joe~

Continuing the above post after being called away: two-prong also means non-polarized outlets. It's possible to replace such outlet receptacles with three-prong polaraized outlets, but to do any good, the outlet boxes need to be grounded and the hot and neutral wires correctly identified. You can check how difficult that will be by shutting off power to one branch circuit and removing a two-prong outlet. If the metal receptacle box has a copper ground wire attached to it, that can be pigtailed to the ground terminal on a replacement plug. The power feed lines under the current building code would be black=hot, white=neutral. If all the pieces are in place, replacing all the outlets in a house is straightforward but tedious (I've done that last part in a house where the previous owners thought it would be a good idea to use a spray gun to paint the interior wall. ceilings, and trim all the same color). With an older house, the power wires could be some other colors, or worse, the colors don't necessarily match the current code. An experienced electrician can test and identify the wiring and add grounding wires if necessary.
Be aware that grounding adapters don't necessarily provide a ground path even if you remember to run the cover plate screw through the adapter's screw plate; that only works if the outlet box is grounded.
You should also look at the circuit breaker for the house (given it's age and the outlet types, it's likely a fuse box instead of a breaker box). What amp rating is on the breakers or fuses? Older 10-amp service lines would be overloaded in a typical house, where the once-standard 15-amp service is increasingly being replaced by 20-amp to handle the demand for electronics. Low amp ratings make it more likely that heavily loaded lines are carrying more electrical noise; that noise can affect the eMac display both through direct transmission into the eMac's power supply and by RFI rediated from lines inside nearby walls.
An Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) with line filtering could improve the screen stability on the eMac. Lower-capacity APC models (e.g. the 350mA BackUPS model) are commonly used as loss-leaders to get people into the computer stores in my area and can be found for US$40 or so.
Good Luck!

"shivering" emac screen

Over the last month my 1 year old 1.25 ghz emac has starting to have a screen problem, wondering if anyone else has come across it. It doesn't happen all the time but it erratically starts to shiver and seems to be getting worse...still have warranty.

I have exactly the same problem.... and I too seemed to have singled it down to when ever the hard drive is being accesed. Although it also happens randomly and when you have loud music playing. I have bought my eMac (same as yours)off eBay, think it has warranty left on it but not sure.
Just wondering if you had got hold of Apple... what they might have said?.... and if you have found any fixes?
Slightly worrying as didn't get any reciepts from the original purchase with it.... AND it was bought in FRANCE!!!
Many Thanks
Andy

Emac Screen Freezes

I really need help...
My Emac 1 gig of ram is not working well. The screen keeps freezing. When you move things alot the picture gets stuck. Ex. When I save, add bookmarks, watch quicktime videos, moving any programs left to right really fast it will freeze. It's more of a graphical problem.
I have to restart my computer every 10 minutes and it's really annoying. I've restored mac os x and basicly got rid of everything but it still not working properly.

It could be hardware, ram or hard drive. It could still be software, an archive & install would preserve items from your old user.
First, create a new account, name it "test" and see if you still get freezes in that User acct? (That will tell if your problem is systemwide or limited to your User acct.) This account is just for test, do nothing further with it.
Open System Preferences >> Accounts >> "+" make it an admin account.
Next run "Apple Hardware Test":
If CD's came with your computer it is on a CD labeled "Hardware Test" To test with CD, insert the CD and restart holding the "c" key until you see the spinning gear.
If DVD insert DVD then:
1. Turn on or restart the computer.
2. Immediately press and hold the Option key. After a few seconds, the Startup Manger screen appearsThe Startup Manager scans for available volumes.
3. Optional: Clicking the circular arrow rescans for other volumes, including NetBoot Server volumes. You can eject any disc in the drive or open an empty tray-loading drive by holding down the Command (Apple) and Period (.) keys. The Command-Period key combination will also close the drive. After inserting a CD capable of starting up your computer, you could rescan for volumes.
4. Click the startup volume you want to use. "Hardware Test"
If hardware test does not mount or does not run bring the computer to Authorized Apple Repair.
Let us know and we'll troubleshoot this further.
-mj
[email protected]

EMac Screen is discolored

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