Is this a display problem, video card problem, OS problem, or ???

Sorry for the long post, but it is needed for background...
I spent the better part of the past 2 hours trying to figure out why my G5 wouldn't boot up. It had been off for around 4 days while I was out of town and up to this point I only had sporadic power up problems, usually having to push the button on the front of the G5 instead of the display which seemed to go to pot after a repair (under warranty) in December. Here's where the display comes in.
After running DW, resetting PRAM and SMU, and unplugging everything, I still could not get it to boot past the initial blueish screen (no login prompt). So, on a whim, I unplugged the keyboard from the back of the 23" Cinema Display (clear case) and plugged it into the front USB port of the G5. It booted right up.
So now I start wondering if the power button on the front of the display which has been very spotty and now seems almost toast is a possible culprit. Or if the USB hub in the monitor is a culprit. Or if it could possibly be the X800 XT causing the problem. Keep in mind it was upgraded 1.5 years ago and I never a problem till now.
To make matters more interesting, this monitor has been in for repair twice in the last 6 months for the same problems - the LCD panel keeps going wonky (pinkish coloring on top or sides or bottom or all round) and as such, the LCD panel itself has been replaced twice. The first time I ever had a problem turning the system on via the front monitor panel was after the first repair. So....
I'm thinking the monitor is on it's way out, but I am leery of having Apple try another repair on this since each time it gets repaired it seems to have something else wrong with it. I'm am terribly close to the end of my AppleCare, too. So if I need to do something it needs to be soon.
Or do you folks think it could be the video card? Which would suck just as bad considering how much that cost when I bought it. Let me know your thoughts on this so I can make a decision on which avenue to explore next. I dread going through AppleCare again, though.....any way to skip right to level 2 or higher support???
Thanks.
Anthony C.

Well I called AppleCare yesterday and, believe it or not, we actually got the USB ports acting normally - well at least I can boot up with the keyboard plugged into the back of the monitor.
They had me reset the Open Firmware and that seemed to do the trick. Of course, the night before I updated to 10.4.10 so that may have had something to do with it, too. No idea.
As for the power sensor button thing, they wanted me to plug the monitor into a different system, either at a Genius Bar or a friend or whatnot to see if it would behave in the same manner - not wanting to activate. I took it to school with me and hooked it up to one of my teacher's G5 and it behaved the same way. It took like 15 times touching the sensor to bring the system up.
So I'll be calling them back and see where they want to go with this. Maybe I'll get lucky and get a new shiny monitor - or not...

Similar Messages

Is this a video card or other problem?

Hi,
I have a G3 B&W rev2, 450 MHz, 704 RAM, DVD-ROM system.
I have two hard disks. One the original 6 GB that runs 9.2.2,
the other is a 100 GB second internal hard drive that contains
4 partitions. One with no OS installed, one with a backup of
the 9.2.2 system, one with 10.4.0 and one with 10.4.11.
I am having startup problems with the 10.4.11 partition.
When I start up from this partition, I got the normal start up screen and
the little dial - but then instead of going to the blue screen I got 4 black rectangles
across the top of the screen. I could start up from the 10.4.0 partition, the DVD-ROM,
or my 9.2.2 disk. Disk Utility, run from the DVD-ROM or from the 10.4.0 partition, found no problems with the 10.4.11 disk or disk permissions.
Someone mentioned they thought it was a video card problem, but if it were,
would that only affect one startup disk??
I reinstalled the 10.4.11 update and the problem went away for
a month or so, but now I am having similar start-up issues again. I start up, get the
gray apple and the dial, then I get a big black rectangle in the center of the
screen like the one that shows up when the kernal crashes - but with no
text. Again, I can start from the DVD-ROM, the 10.4.0 partition and the drive
with 9.2.2. Disk Utility doesn't find any problems with the disk.
Any ideas on what is going on? I am planning to reinstall the 10.4.11 update
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Thanks,
bdennehey

It's not the video card, or you would have problems with the other OS's on the Mac.
It's hard to say what is causing the problem. Do you use the OS 10.4.11 partition more than the others ? If so, the other OS 10.4 partition may experience the same problem if used more.
Have you added RAM lately ? Added any other hardware ?

Two video cards at once problem

i just got an eGeForce 9600 GTX card and i put it on my MSI P6N SLI Platinum nvidia motherboard.
There are two PCI 16 Express slots. The card works fine alone but...
What i was hoping to do, was to run my old GeForce 7600 GT at the same time and run
two little monitors off it and then run my hi def tv and bigger monitor off the 9600.
My computer isn't recognizing the 7600...it's in there securely...i've pulled it out put it
back in etc...it was working totally fine before today so the problem isn't with the card...
While reading my book for my motherboard it says that i can't run two video
cards unless they are SLI linked. I don't want SLI...one 9600 is fine for video games. I want
four monitors...Has anyone heard of this? Is there any way around this?
anything I can try in the bios or anything like that? has there been a bios workaround for this
or anything? i've been googling around and found nothing. i've never heard of motherboards
that exclusively do this...what's the point?
..if they have two PCI 16 slots why not let them both work??
I'm running vista 64 bit...
any help soooo appreciated
thanks

Now, the strange thing is: after a few initial issues one of the macs is doing fine. The second one, on the contrary, is a nightmare. Finalcut gives a green screen of death and hangs up suddenly while performing simple operations (like dropping a clip on the timeline).
I'm thinking of trying to replace the two video cards with an older single dual display card, and giving up the fancy lcd monitors (that i bought at vast cost), at least until apple issues an upgrade that adresses the two video card problem. <
If the machines are mechanically equal, it's obviously not the cards. Although you can only be absolutely certain if you swap the cards between machines and see if the green screen issue follows one or both cards.
However, that new LCD display and card combination doesn't have much time in the pipeline so there could be other issues and you're doing the beta testing for all of us. Blaming the reseller is pointless; no one can keep track of all of these issues. We only find out about them only because of reported failures.
You should research the "green screen" here on the forum. I do not recall if there are display or graphics cards issues associated with it. That seems unlikely. IIRC, it appears to be a QT issue.
bogiesan

Video card, or other problem.

when using the 3D tools in Illustrator, it totally chokes in processing on all but the most basic shapes/paths. it starts, but never finishes. I think the problem may be my video card doesn't have enough capacity. can someone suggest an upgrade? I have a 2x quad 2.26 with 8GB RAM.

Refresh our memory, you don't list what video card you have.
The 2.26 was a "what are they thinking" to me. A 3.2GHz 4 or 6-core.
Want to upgrade graphic card check the Store. Four choices from $150 up (Nvidia Quadro 4000 is $1195 Apple but on Amazon same PNY Mac Pro version is $790).
Apple Graphics Cards

Connecting 3 displays when video card has only 2 ports?

I have a 2009 Mac Pro quadcore with only two display ports on my video card. Is it possible to hook up a 3rd display using an external USB video cards? I haven't been able to get my Mac Pro to recognize the one that works with my Macbook Pro. FYI, this is what I'm talking about: http://www.iogear.com/product/GUC2020DW6/

For another 50 bucks you could add a "real" card that has some hope of actually performing for you:
http://store.apple.com/us/search?find=GT+120&mco=MTA4MTkyMjY
or for another 150 bucks you could replace your current card with a 5770 (but you would have to upgrade to 10.6.7)
http://store.apple.com/us/search?find=5770&mco=MTA4MTkyMjY

Video card or driver problems with an N200, please help!

I have a lenovo 3000 N200, it is really cool, runs even games quite well, including newer ones.
But, is it normal to for the display driver program to freeze out in Warcraft 3? It always does that, when accessing the list of maps in the game and after 3-5 mins during an actual game. It sets the resolution down to 640X480 (from 1280X800) and in 16 color. I have to reset it in order to make it work. Also it does the same in Spore - though after having the driver written for Spore installed, ( which I downloaded from lenovo's site ) I haven't encountered that problem so far. Also Second Life shuts down - thankfully it does not freeze the drivers. I understand that the model I have is not meant for gaming but if it can run Warhammer 40k: Soulstorm at meduim graphic settings (on widescreen) without a lagg I can't understand why it wouldn't be able to handle warcraft 3 - that even an ATi m200 express can handle. I mean an X3100 from Intel must be far more powerful. (Said ATi card laggs with older games like Unreal Tournament)
I have the latest driver - official - and a Win Xp pro Sp2. I always keep my system up to date - save for opsys but so far driver did not need sp3 - and virus clean.
Please help me?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Well, Unreal Tournament 2004 runs flawlessly on max graphics - though simple Unreal Tournament laggs like hell with all possible settings - also, as I said Dawn Of War and it's expansions run well on med graphics. The Suffering Ties That Bind runs also good on highest settings - though there is a bit of degradation compared to my tabletop pc's performance. Disciples 2 ran - of course - well, there were some texture problems with it but Heroes 5 ran quite well even on higher settings (as I mentioned it sometimes blunted down the textures but not always and it ran without a lagg). Alien Versus Predator 2 ran on max graphics, and there was no trouble, save for the aliens' special vision (that white thing that looks as if inverted colors) didn't work - aka was only a black screen - and that the crosshair of the smartgun was only a blank red/green block on the middle of the screen.Oh, and Command & Conquer: Generals Zero Hour works on highest settings without a lagg, along with Quake 3, and Jedi knight : Academy. It even runs Perfect World on high settings and only laggs in bigger towns - but that also might be because of the tremendous bandwidth usage that occurs. Even Red Alert 3 was able to run, but I would only advise that for RA fanatics, on low settings it was playable. Also, C & C: Tiberium Wars runs better than RA 3 , if you like that it is quite playable and worth a try. As you can see I have put it to it's limits to see what it can endure. Unreal Tournament 3 ran, though was gruesomely degraded and then it gave me the blue screen of death; so I quickly uninstalled that. Other than the forementioned program I had no real problems with the card, but the existing problems are a pain in the ... well we all know how bothering it can be when one is unable to play his/her favourite game (that should really run flawlessly).
Doesn't vista eat up too much of the system resources? A friend of mine was complaining about his n200 that vista is too slow on it and it eats up too much processor/memory.
Also, still no new on videocard front... Asked around if anyone knows, but I am guessing that maybe even Blizzard - referring to my Warcraft problem - shows more compassion to their forums and users than Lenovo, so I'll ask around there too.

APPLE 23'' CINEMA DISPLAY AND VIDEO CARD

My new Mac Pro (2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xenon-8GB RAM) has a NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. I am thinking to upgrade it to either the ATI Radeon HD 4870, or the just coming out NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285 (manufactured by EVGA).
Any information for the two products, comparison charts, charachteristics etc will be very helpful and wellcomed.

Try the WinACD drivers from http://sourceforge.net/projects/winacd/

K8T Neo-V, problems w/ savage agp video card (Stealth III S540)

Hi all
I have a K8T Neo-V mobo, 512 MB Kingston memory and a Stealth III S540 agp video card. The problem is that when I play any kind of video in my linux box it freezes completely the system, same thing with Windows Xp SP2. When i start Soldier of Fortune it hangs up the system. The agp card is quiet old, i know, could be this a problem with some BIOS setup like 'aperture size' and speed, and so on? Don't know about what this options means ???, maybe that's the source of the problem, who can give me some piece of advice about this, please. I'm considering getting a newer and faster agp card, but not in the near future.
Thank you

I am suprised a card that old even works as I thought those were for the original AGP setup that had different voltages.
I would really recommend grabing a newer card up and if you are just looking for a simple display maybe you can still find an old Ti4200 or such.

MBP 15" video card problems while on battery power

I have a MBP 15" that I got about 3 weeks ago. I noticed that when I put it on battery power the video display becomes broken up laterally. I can drag the window or app window out of view then back into view and its ok. But if I start scrolling again, the text, image, video or whatever is on screen becomes distorted.
could this be a bad video card? should I try to get it replaced?
Any insights?
thanks!
T

I'm having the same issue--it looks like a tearing or smearing of lines of text, mainly in Safari, though I have seen it in Mail. I haven't noticed it related to running on AC or battery, but it may be...I had an older MacBook Pro (core duo) running 10.5.2 that was fine and recently upgraded to a 2.4 Core 2 Duo and this problem has popped up.
This issue looks suspiciously like a problem I was having on a Mac Pro with the ATI1900 card--it was brushed off for ages as a "heat problem" or the like with the card, and then miraculously after months of waiting a firmware update came out that completely cleared up the problem...

Problems with FCP and Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT video card

Not sure if this should be in the MacBook Pro forum or this one...
I am having trouble with the GeForce 8600M GT video card while editing in final cut pro (and after effects). I have talked with numerous people at applecare, but they say that they are unaware of issues regarding the video card.
The problem: It's almost like the card is unable to keep up with professional video applications. Whenever there is movement in the video I'm editing, I get lines across the screen. Not sure to how better to explain it than to say it looks like the video card is having a tough time refreshing. (I can take the same video to a much older power book, and it plays perfectly, so its not the source file.)
At first I thought it was an FCP issue, but I just started using after effects, and I'm having the same problem in there. If I edit in after effects, when I play it back (in after effects), I get the lines. I can then export the project to a quicktime file. The quicktime file plays perfectly (no lines) when not involved with a professional application. Then if I import the same quicktime file into FCP and play it back in FCP, the lines happen again.
Is anyone esle having this problem? Any thoughts? Any solutions?
Thanks!
Michael
Message was edited by: mjaffe00
Message was edited by: mjaffe00

I had searched the macbook pro forum, but not this one. It seems that the "screen tearing" issue has been talked about a lot, so I apologize for the repetitive nature of the post. I will say that I am fairly shocked that given how many people have clearly called applecare, no one there seems to have a clue that there is a problem with this video card. I have talked with at least 4 different people in the FCP specialty group, and not one had any clue what I was talking about... 3 of the 4 were fairly insistent that it was a video source issue on my side.
Message was edited by: mjaffe00

MacBook Pro 15" video card problems (i think)

Can anyone tell me if this is indeed a video card problem?
MBP 15" info (Dec. 2011)
Processor 2.4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
OS X Lion 10.7.5
This is what happened:
I use my mbp heavily because I edit a lot of videos with Premiere. I also use lightroom / photoshop alot + games. I also installed Parallels desktop late 2013. I don't know if that is relevant but anyway. Everything started late 2013 (a little after installing parallels actually) when there are moments when the audio wouldn't work and I couldn't adjust the volume. It would come back anyway so i didn't mind it. Then the fans were on high speed for little activity. After that the keyboard backlight couldn't be adjusted and wouldnt work. I ignored all of these cuz i wasn't troubling me at the time. In January i left for france to study - I use bike all the time and once stupidly placed my laptop on the basket going to school (rough roads). I had a class with html so I had to open Parallels, my teacher pointed out the fans and how loud they were. That day, parallels desktop said i must upgrade to windows 9 or it will restart every 2hours. I didn't of course. I didn't have time to.
After that (a few days later i think) my laptop would randomly turn into a black screen but it's still on (the power LED is on) I tried turning it off by pressing down the power button and then turning it back on. It worked the first time. During the first week, the frequency of it happening grew. It would do it almost 3 times a day. during that same week I tried to do an SMC reset. It fixed the keyboard light, fans and audio but not the black screen thing. It just keeps on happening around 1-3 times a day. It only happens when I'm using it btw, never when I just leave it. ALSO, after a few days, it would take longer hours to open my mbp again. I mean, the screen would turn black. i would turn it off, then on again. I will ONLY hear the hard drive moving but no startup sound and no grey screen and apple logo. nothing.
The following weeks after that, I asked a friend to help me out. He suggested that I install gfxCardStatus because he said it might be my video card. He instructed that I keep it on intergrated only. So I installed that and did what he said I thought it worked for a while because the black screens stopped happening (even when gfx keeps on going back to dynamic) BUT NOW, MY LAPTOP WOULD FREEZE (not turn black). I'd shut it down using the power button but it still takes me hours to open it again. Sometimes, I'd wait for the battery to drain because it would startup when i charge it (sometimes)
I tried doing AHT as well to confirm the video card problem, but the results are no problems found. I really don't want to replace my logicboard here in france. everything is more expensive here. ;__;
Today I uninstalled parallels to see if that might have had anything to do with my problem now but i think that's just wishful thinking.
Can somebody tell me if this is really about the video card? Thank you

Your appointment at the genius Bar in an Apple Store (anywhere in the world) for an evaluation is FREE, in warranty or out. Those guys put their hands on these Macs all day every day, and they are especially good at Physical and Power problems.
Ask them.

Problems with my video card maybe AMD 6750M

I am having a problem I dont know how to solve it.
My video card is having problems everytime I switch it to AMD Radeon my computer freeze. or glitch. This happend to me last week.
Chipset Model:          AMD Radeon HD 6750M
Type:          GPU
Bus:          PCIe
PCIe Lane Width:          x8
VRAM (Total):          1024 MB
Vendor:          ATI (0x1002)
Device ID:          0x6741
Revision ID:          0x0000
ROM Revision:          113-C0170L-573
gMux Version:          1.9.24
EFI Driver Version:          01.00.573
I have an MacBook Pro 17" Early 2011
I cant design in photoshop or edit a video, I can only Use the Built In GC.
Can I disable the other one? or fix it?
Thanks

I think it's a driver issue. See this: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/W701-crash-problems/td-p/265780

Problems with video card in CS4

I'm having what I think is video problems since I switched to CS4. No problems with CS3 before, or any other programs except CS4, now. Frequent apparent redraws leave remnants on screen, panels move back and forth, etc.
I have a Dell Precision 490 with 4gb ram and a nVidia Quadra fx 550 with 128 megs of ram. Open GL is enabled. I have loaded all the latest nVidia drivers.
If this sounds like a video card problem, can anyone recommend a good, not too expensive card? I don't play any games, just use the machine for PS. ID and Flash mostly.
Thanks in advance.
Jon

I am having the same problem with CS3 and CS4. Any luck on fixing your problem?
Thanks
andy
[email protected]

Is it possible to exclude one video card from After Effects. There are 2 in this system and one, I believe, does not have CUDA support.

This system has 2 video cards. A new nVidia Quadra 4000 and an older BlackMagic DeckLink Extreme 3D+. I would like After Effects to use only the nVidia card so I can take advantage of CUDA. Is there a preference I can set so that AE only uses the nVidia card?

What version of After Effects do you have (down to the decimal points)?

Is this a display problem, video card problem, OS problem, or ???

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