Lawrence Ingraham’s Blog

I’m the proud owner on a Penryn Macbook Pro. I ordered mine the day they were released and have been using it as my primary machine for work and home since at least January-ish. Only a few weeks after using it, I started noticing some funky vertical stripes coming from the bottom of the display, kinda like every other LED decided to stay turned off. This usually happens when I wake it from sleep.

I did some research on this when it first happened and there wasn’t much online yet. Today there’s a few discussions about it. Since I’m about to head out for a long weekend, I decided to take it in to an Apple Store today to get it sorted out. I took that picture above this morning to show the genius, assuming it wouldn’t happen when I wanted it to.

When I showed the genius the photo and explained the problem, he knew all about it. According to him, it’s a known issue with some Penryn Macbook pros which Apple Engineering doesn’t have an answer for. They don’t know if it’s hardware, software, completely confused. He told me he’d take my computer and run some diagnostics if I wanted, replacing anything that failed, but that it probably wouldn’t fix the problem. Frustrating to say the least.

What he did recommend was a quick turn off and on of the display. This seems to do the trick most of the time. He showed me a key command I didn’t know of before to do this quickly. To turn off the display, hit Command – Option – Eject. Then once it’s off, hit any key to turn it back on, and you should be back in business.

While there’s no current fix for this issue, he told me to call applecare every so often and check if anything’s been resolved. In typical Apple style, if there’s a fix and it happens outside warranty, they’ll cover it. However, there’s no fix yet, so don’t hold your breath.

No Comments »