Filed under: Ask TUAW, MacBook
Ask TUAW: What the heck is up with my MacBook's graphics
Tom Kim is having an odd problem with his MacBook. It seems that the integrated graphics card on the motherboard is a little wonky. He gets odd attracting around menus and windows (as can been seen at the right). Sometimes when he wakes his MacBook from sleep the Dock is completely replaced with static.Having seen Tom's MacBook in person I recommended that he get himself to an Apple Store and have a Genius take a look (and most likely replace the entire machine or at least the motherboard).
Anyone else seeing problems like this on their MacBooks? So far my MacBook (Janus is his name) has exhibited no odd behavior (other than being hot), but I would be interested to see if anyone else has graphics issues like Tom.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Marky Mark said 1:41PM on 6-23-2006
Not got a macbook but i've seen the same problem on my parents new mini also with the integrated graphics. It doesn't seem to do it all the time but is more likely to when having been asleep for a long time (say 4 or 5 hours). I've also seen the dock get scrambled and the top right menu bar too.
Logging out solves the problem though switching between users does nothing. You have to log everyone out and then its gone.
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John Hopper said 1:42PM on 6-23-2006
Supposedly that means you need more RAM.
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Derek said 1:42PM on 6-23-2006
I would try reinstalling Mac OS X
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Marky Mark said 1:45PM on 6-23-2006
Hey John where did you hear about the RAM solution? I'd told my parents to get some anyway so hopefully that will help.
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AppleGuy said 1:48PM on 6-23-2006
i actually have wierd problems with my G5's Video Card with core image
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andrew said 1:55PM on 6-23-2006
I've had this problem with my powerbook, but only when running Firefox, as I've noticed you are doing in the background.
Given my experience with similar problems on PCs, I can say with a pretty good degree of certainty that this is some sort of RAM problem (you've either got bad RAM, or you've got a program that's writing things to memory that it shouldn't be)
Stop using firefox, or anything else "unusual" (ie. not Cocoa or Carbon-based), reinstall OSX, and see if the problem goes away.
The problem almost always exhibits itself shortly before a crash.....
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Alan said 1:59PM on 6-23-2006
I'm having the "mooing" problem. Started a thread at Apple.com, which is now quite long. I've also alerted Rob Pegoraro (computer tech reviewer of The Washington Post) to this problem.
Here's the link:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2586550&tstart=0#2586550
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bob Hyatt said 2:09PM on 6-23-2006
new macbook...
takes FOREVER to wake up after sleeping, as well as to find wireless networks (i sit and watch the spinning rainbow wheel of death a lot). My old g4 powerbook (1gig) blew this 1.8 intel duo core away, at least on those two things.
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MikeK said 2:13PM on 6-23-2006
I had very odd behavior with the graphics card until I replaced all the old controll panel items with Universal builds or deleted them. Things like Deja Vu, Macaroni, SynergyKM etc. After that no more issues. (don't know why this worked it just did)
Take Care Mike
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Brent Todd said 2:19PM on 6-23-2006
In responce to Bob Hyatt...
I had this issue too, then I remembered something that I have done with every single one of my laptops. Under the energy preference pain uncheck "Put harddrive to sleep when possible"
Apple calls this a hard sleep and has a real hard time waking up from it. When the machine sleeps, the machine doesn't access the HD anyways so kind of not needed.
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Tim O. said 2:23PM on 6-23-2006
My macbook did the exact same thing. I eventually narrowed it down to having too little hard drive space availiable. To solve this problem I re-compressed some files and deleted some things. After that the problem went away and has not come back. If you are having trouble with it and are waiting for a new had drive to get here (that's what I did, ordered a new 7200 rpm 100 gig drive) so don't want to delete anything, try closing other apps before opening large applications that eat up swap space and make the free space decreace. Logging out and back in seemed to always do the trick as well. Here is a screen shot of how bad mine was: (http://img48.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bug8io.png)
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Adam said 2:26PM on 6-23-2006
Posted my comments to the linked weblog - I'm experiencing the same thing, as are many other users. See this Apple discussion:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2489169
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Gunesh Raj said 2:27PM on 6-23-2006
I think its the untegrated graphic card itself.
and not specifically macbook.
I got a new dell inspiron 9400 & it had the same problem. After waking from sleep, it looks like a untuned TV, & the cursor looks different.
I got a replacement from dell a week later.
I suggest replacing the macbook asap.
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Don Wilson said 2:44PM on 6-23-2006
I got the same kind of problem with my unsupported graphics card the first few weeks when they got Max OS X working on intel machines.
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Radu Dutzan said 2:49PM on 6-23-2006
Once random color lines (like stretched static) replaced all the graphics on my Intel iMac (with an ATI Radeon X1600) after waking it up while on Front Row. The problem didn't go until I shut it down, and even the graphics that were redrawn had the problem. The system was still usable. Then the Mac put a blue covering over the video image where I could only see the mouse in front of a blue screen, and while the system was still usable (I noticed the mouse changed to a hand when it was on Exposé), it never recovered, so I had to restart. Never happened again (although I've had 2 more issues after waking up, none of them were like this one).
So, yes, I guess you can't fully trust a Rev. A Mac after all, and it gets worse with an architecture change.
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Yuri Walkiw said 2:52PM on 6-23-2006
I have the same problem on my iMac g4 when I'm using firefox. I've gotten used to it already.a
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Ron Rosson said 2:53PM on 6-23-2006
This is an issue and has been reported to Apple via there bug reporter by many users. Apple's ressponse is that they are working on it and will update us when they hav a solution.
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Chris Johnson said 2:53PM on 6-23-2006
I had exactly the same problem two nights ago I my new Intel Mac Mini.
I think the problem came down to corrupted cache files or something along those lines. I used OnyX to Repair Permissions, run the maintenance scripts and Optimize the system and the problem has not returned.
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Scott said 2:54PM on 6-23-2006
my powerbook goes into a nutty race condition every once in a while where the kernel_task consumes more and more resources (starts at like 30% and climbs). Impossible to get anything done.
my dual g5 powermac (this isn't a hardware problem) likes to lose the prefs for my applications folder, leaving it in utter mayhem. i faithfully reset it, but its pissing me off!
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Justin said 3:01PM on 6-23-2006
I get garbage on my Macbook Pro screen all the time when I wake from sleep .. usually when I've recently connected or disconnected my Cinema Display. The garbage seems to be focused around certain things, like the Dock and Flash movies.
I'm not sure why these would be particularly susceptible -- maybe they're drawn by CoreImage?
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