up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

We're having two issues that I think are related to each other.

  1. The screen of the laptop is occasionally freezing and doing very odd things like can be seen in this picture:

    enter image description here

  2. On restart, the startup chimp keeps repeatedly happening (10-15 times) and then it will eventually startup. After several minutes of use the screen issue will occur and we'll have to restart the computer.

I'm assuming this is something very serious and we'll have to bring it in to be looked at, but I thought someone might have an idea of what is going on or what we could do with it.

link|improve this question
feedback

1 Answer

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Regarding the screen - That is generally (in my experience) not the screen that is damaged, but the graphics card itself.

The only way to fix it is to replace the graphics card inside the machine. I am not sure on Macs, but unless your motherboard supports MXM (or similar) modules, it generally means a new motherboard (or repair/chip replacement) is required.

Regarding the startup chime - I have no idea. I am 100% confident you have hardware issues regarding the graphics card. It is possible that the startup procedure is linked to the graphics (initialisation or similar) and as the graphics is failing, it is a subroutine error and causing the sound to repeat (or similar).

If your machine is Nvidia based and it has one of the faulty GPUs, Read this article about getting a free repair.

link|improve this answer
Thanks for the response, I was hoping it was related to a simple piece of hardware interfering with the startup process. We're going to have to take it in and hopefully working with the graphics card will fix the problem with the startup process. – mjdth Feb 27 '11 at 0:15
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.