DolphinDude31
Registered
Hey, guys. I'm gonna apologize in advance if this was already posted, but I'm not quite sure what the technical phrasing for this issue is, so I could've missed it in search.
I'm running a Macbook Pro 17', manufactured around September 08. It's currently running OS X 10.5. I received it from my school with the computer already set up and all the software pre-installed, so I personally don't have access to things like the boot disc and other base software, but I can get a hold of it if it's necessary.
Just to lay out the basic facts:
The crash:
Somewhere along the boot-up process, or somewhere soon after boot-up, the computer will freeze and a bunch of pixels will rearange themselves. I wish I could show a screenshot, but the best way I can describe it is that these little jagged stripes of pixels will move to places they aren't supposed to; for example, below the little spinning boot-up circle on the initial boot screen, there's a block of pixels kind of shaped like --.--_ that pulses darker and lighter in time with the pixels on the bottom of the circle, so they just seem to be transposed from another position on the screen.
If this happens during boot-up, which is most of the time (on the screen with the dark grey apple on a light grey background), then the computer will try to boot up for a while, then the artifacts will run in stripes down the screen and a window will come up telling me to restart my computer.
Sometimes--usually when I've shut it down and taken out the battery and let it sit for a while--it'll get past boot-up, and I'll get either almost to the desktop or even get a couple minutes of actual use before the artifacts appear again and the computer freezes.
Additionally, when I get the computer to re-boot, Mac gives me an error message that the OS crashed unexpectedly. I've managed to see the message, but it's a long bunch of tech gobuldeguk to me, and the two times I've tried to copy-paste it into something, the OS has crashed again before I could get the message to something I could access from another computer (gmail, etc).
Connected to computer:
As I've tried diagnosing this problem, I've disconnected everything from the computer. No disc in the drive, no headphones, no USB's...I even took the battery out and ran it just through the power cable. Nothing has helped, except for the above note that, if I take the battery out for a while, it sometimes lets me get a couple minutes extra life before crashing.
I am running Vista on BootCamp on this computer; the computer defaults to Mac, and I'm not trying to initiate Bootcamp when this error occurs, but I figured the info might be helpful.
Progression of problem:
I started noticing issues, which seemed minor, a couple days ago. Every once in a while, my computer would freeze up. I'd never see this happen; it only seemed to occur if I left it idle for a while. But the computer would just refuse to recieve any inputs. More often than not, the screen was dark, and just refused to come back on. If I closed my computer (put it to sleep), then opened it, it usually started working again.
Over the course of yesterday (I was working on the computer all day), this came up a few times, but I didn't really think anything of it. Then, late in the day, these artifacts came up and, while I got another maybe half hour the first time I restarted it, I'm yet to get more than about 10 minutes of life on any subsequent restart.
The fixable freeze that happened yesterday seemed to happen more often when my screensaver was on (ElectricSheep), but I think that's more a consequence of the idleness of my computer than the screensaver itself.
If you guys can't fix the problem with this information or anything else I can give you, I can just take the computer to my college IT office and see what they can do; unfortunately, they're not open on weekends, so I figured I'd give this spot a shot to see if this was a common or well-known problem.
Hope I was thorough enough. I'm fairly knowledgable when it comes to computers, but apparently not knowledgable enough to fix this problem.
I'm running a Macbook Pro 17', manufactured around September 08. It's currently running OS X 10.5. I received it from my school with the computer already set up and all the software pre-installed, so I personally don't have access to things like the boot disc and other base software, but I can get a hold of it if it's necessary.
Just to lay out the basic facts:
The crash:
Somewhere along the boot-up process, or somewhere soon after boot-up, the computer will freeze and a bunch of pixels will rearange themselves. I wish I could show a screenshot, but the best way I can describe it is that these little jagged stripes of pixels will move to places they aren't supposed to; for example, below the little spinning boot-up circle on the initial boot screen, there's a block of pixels kind of shaped like --.--_ that pulses darker and lighter in time with the pixels on the bottom of the circle, so they just seem to be transposed from another position on the screen.
If this happens during boot-up, which is most of the time (on the screen with the dark grey apple on a light grey background), then the computer will try to boot up for a while, then the artifacts will run in stripes down the screen and a window will come up telling me to restart my computer.
Sometimes--usually when I've shut it down and taken out the battery and let it sit for a while--it'll get past boot-up, and I'll get either almost to the desktop or even get a couple minutes of actual use before the artifacts appear again and the computer freezes.
Additionally, when I get the computer to re-boot, Mac gives me an error message that the OS crashed unexpectedly. I've managed to see the message, but it's a long bunch of tech gobuldeguk to me, and the two times I've tried to copy-paste it into something, the OS has crashed again before I could get the message to something I could access from another computer (gmail, etc).
Connected to computer:
As I've tried diagnosing this problem, I've disconnected everything from the computer. No disc in the drive, no headphones, no USB's...I even took the battery out and ran it just through the power cable. Nothing has helped, except for the above note that, if I take the battery out for a while, it sometimes lets me get a couple minutes extra life before crashing.
I am running Vista on BootCamp on this computer; the computer defaults to Mac, and I'm not trying to initiate Bootcamp when this error occurs, but I figured the info might be helpful.
Progression of problem:
I started noticing issues, which seemed minor, a couple days ago. Every once in a while, my computer would freeze up. I'd never see this happen; it only seemed to occur if I left it idle for a while. But the computer would just refuse to recieve any inputs. More often than not, the screen was dark, and just refused to come back on. If I closed my computer (put it to sleep), then opened it, it usually started working again.
Over the course of yesterday (I was working on the computer all day), this came up a few times, but I didn't really think anything of it. Then, late in the day, these artifacts came up and, while I got another maybe half hour the first time I restarted it, I'm yet to get more than about 10 minutes of life on any subsequent restart.
The fixable freeze that happened yesterday seemed to happen more often when my screensaver was on (ElectricSheep), but I think that's more a consequence of the idleness of my computer than the screensaver itself.
If you guys can't fix the problem with this information or anything else I can give you, I can just take the computer to my college IT office and see what they can do; unfortunately, they're not open on weekends, so I figured I'd give this spot a shot to see if this was a common or well-known problem.
Hope I was thorough enough. I'm fairly knowledgable when it comes to computers, but apparently not knowledgable enough to fix this problem.
