IMac :: Black Smudges On Screen / Switching Between The Hard Drives?
Oct 26, 2009
I have had my iMac for about 4 months, i have been using it as my main desktop since. I have noticed black smudges, kinda like finger prints on the screen that would not go away after cleaning it with a damp cloth. I removed the glass panel and cleaned inside the glass and the problem still remained.
This is not the main issue, i can live it with. I have two iMacs with the same specs, one is in my main home office that i used most of the time while the other is my home that i use not that much. The smudges does annoy me when i watch movies a little bit but its not enough to get me to replace my mac. I was thinking since i used my office iMac more is it possible to switch the hard drives on them so that i get all the info from my office iMac onto my home iMac without complications?
Since i dont use the home iMac as much as the office one i can tolerate a few black smudges more and i would have an iMac in the office that looked new.If i switch the hard drives will it be as if i switch macs and if anyones knows how to fix the black smudges it would be a great help.
This computer is only a few months old, I have taken very good care of it and use it for mainly school and music. I noticed this while on Netflix when the background becomes completely red. There is one very noticeable black smudge, and the rest are noticeable by tilting the screen and looking at it from a sharp angle. I noticed that the smudge sticks out greatly with almost any solid color.
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
I have a 15'' mbp previous generation with the silver keys. I had my trackpad repaired by apple back in March 2010. Since then, these little black smudges and white spots have been appearing behind the lcd screen. The black smudges actually look like dust that got between the screen. I took some pictures and circled them. You can see them better against a white screen. Sorry about the quality of the pics. The first one is the whole screen and the second two are close ups of a black smudge and a white spot.
I've just bought a 500GB Western digital scorpio blue HD. I'm going to put it in my mac mini which I don't have yet. I have a macbook at the moment, so want to format the new drive so it's ready to put straight in the mini and use
Is it OK if i put the 500GB HD in the macbook, then boot it from disc and install leopard onto it that way? Or do i need to format the disc in some way before I install leopard?
I just got a new MBP i7, and whenever the graphics switch from the Nvidia 330m chip to the Intel chip, the screen "flickers" black for a short moment before reappearing. Can anyone with a new MBP comment on this behavior? It doesn't happen on the switch from Intel->Nvidia, just the other way around.
About 1 week ago, I noticed 2 faint grey smudges in the middle of my MacBook Pro screen. I dismissed it at the time because I could barely see them unless I looked extremely close on a dark screen. I opened my computer up yesterday to see that the amount of spots had tripled from 2 to 6, are becoming more apparent, and all in the same area in the middle of the screen. They are still only able to be seen on a dark screen. The smudges are about the size of the cursor Also, when I tilt my head or tilt my laptop screen far back on a white screen, I can see that those spots turn slightly brighter white than the rest of the screen. While the grey smudges aren't connected, these white areas appear to connect to make a circle.
Another quick note, in December, I had a similar problem with my screen. The white spots were in the same circular shape and clear on any background, however, instead of grey smudges, I had spots that were black in the exact same circular shape. Apple labeled it as pixel anomalies and replaced my screen for me with no problems. Do you think it is pixel anomalies or something different? I bought the laptop in September 2011 and it is under every?
I came back from work to wake up my iMac. It made the noise but the screen stayed black. I tried restarting by holding the power button- I can hear it start and the chime but still have a black screen. I tried resetting the pram, and unplugging the cord but I still get a black screen. I can hear the chime though; I'm not sure if that means anything. I just had the hard drive replaced in February so I hope it's not that. just wanted to clarify that when I restart, I get the chime but the screen stays black- I don't get to the grey screen. So I'm assuming right now that my display may be shot?
I have a Imac 20 with a small 3.5 hard drive and I have bought a bigger 360 gig 3.5 hard drive to replace the old one. I have the new one in an external case with USB 2.0 right now. Is there some way I can transfer the entire contents of the old hard drive on to the new one and then swap out the old drive with the new drive and not miss a beat?
My computer screen is skipping and switching erratically between sites/functions. Sometimes it just switches to a grey dashboard screen. Has anyone had this problem?
I hope each of you had a very happy Thanksgiving. I have a question to ask. I feel very embarrass for contacting you guys with so many questions that seem so simple. The user manual does not help in most cases. I have 2 hard drives on my G4 Power Mac. One is used for my graphic design, web design, and desktop publishing software. The other one is used for general computing browsing, e-mail, internet surfing, and using Virtual PC for windows files. If I am using the one for graphics and want to switch to the other to use Virtual PC, I have to open System Preferences and click on the name of the other drive and then restart in order to use that drive with its software. Are there any shortcuts I can use instead of going through so much trouble?
I was done doing various tasks on the iMac and when I decided to plug in the external hard drive for a Time Machine backup, the drive spun, but was never shown on the desktop.I also tried another external drive and had the same thing happen.
After rebooting (hey, this sounds like Windows!), the drive again showed up on the desktop and Time Machine worked fine.Is an external hard drive not showing up on the desktop a somewhat common issue?
My ancient G4 quicksilver no longer powers up and is not used any more. I want to take it to the dump but should I remove the hard drives first? Obviously I can't do anything to wipe them as it has no power.
I have a fairly new iMac that I upgraded to Snow Leopard a few months ago. It seemed to me that prior to that my external HD worked fine with Time Machine. Since then it is recognized for a short period of time when I connect it, then it disappears. I replaced it with a WD My Book. It worked perfectly for a month and now it has shut down. Has anybody had run into this before? I can't believe that every hard drive fails within a month in the same mysterious way!
Are the hard drives variable in each model? Any chance that people who have received theirs could post which model and hard drive it came with, to get an idea of what each is shipping with?
Is it possible to have an external HDD connected to an iMac or Mac Mini on a regular basis? I have a Power Mac G4, and it's always had issues with going into sleep mode when there is any external storage connected via the USB 2.0 ports (and I've put in replacement ports to try and remedy this, to no avail). The main problem is that once the system wakes up, it thinks you've improperly removed the device. Apple told me, way back, that this was normal and to just eject all external storage before going into sleep mode. Which is a pain, but looking at a new desktop Mac I would like to just get the tiny, base HDD and use a beefy external for all my media - unless this is still an acceptable norm with new macs.
I'm wondering if there is a way (and room) to replace the standard drive with 2 hard drives. I was thinking something like a 128G SSD and then the biggest notebook drive I can get (7200rpm).
The SSD would be the primary drive and should just scream.
I am a photographer. My Mac Tower and Macbook Pros display my external hard drives on the desktop. That makes workflow so much easier. I just purchased an I-Mac and have to access the external HDs through the menu. how I can display the icons for the external HDs on my desktop?
I have a 13" macbook pro, i was using it one night and was runnung ok until i come back to it the next morning.I opened the lid but the backlight didnt come on but could just see the screen so i re-started it by holding down the power button and then thats where it never worked again for me. I have followed some of the tips from some forums but i have no luck.i used another hdd for my mac to use on as its bigger GB than the original,ive been using that for 5 months with no problems, now my mac wont show any of the hdd's even the orginal one that wasnt formatted. Ive managed to format the original one but its not showing that one niether.the second hdd ive left with the snow lepard on it. Now with the other mac ive plugged them both in externally and shows up on desktop but still no luck on the mac thats down. Ive even tried with the installation cd that shows up on startup management but nothing eles.
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), Mac OS X (10.5.1)
Last week I put an extra hard drive into a powermac G4 - i didnt know if the hardrive was working or not, and I was asked to put both Harddrives in the one machine to find out if it was working. I did this and nothing happened. I changed the jumpers and still nothing happened.
the existing hardrive was being read but not the new one that I had put in, so I went to start up disk and changed the disk that I was starting up from to the other hardrive. It wouldnt boot, i took the hardrive out and tried to put the computer back to its original state and nothing happened. just a blank screen. I have tried pressing OPT and the hardrive appears but after this screen nothing happens. if I were to use the install disc, would this wipe the hard-drive at all?
Got me a Second Hand iMac g5 with OSX 10.6 on Screen is black. I changed Power Cable = no Result seen i opened and a thinny Cable from hard drive were not connected. I had to remove the Ram to do that,but no Result i opened again and found another thinny Cable from Broadband Socked comming out. I connected it but nothing happening i opened again with all Leads removed. I removed the Battery inside,pushed after 2 Hour such small Button inside,put Battery in Place,switched on and nothing happened. i pressed the power-Button twice,and on second Time the Screen went White and Fan blow as Hell,but stuck on that. I switched off and on and it was Black again. I disconnected the Lead and switched on after 5 Hour and nothing happens I removed Battery again,pushed after 2 Hour thinny black button inside and nothing when started With nothing happened i always mean "The screen is black",but the Start sound is and i hear a little Fan,and Keyboard reactes with Light on keyboard and with Ping on Computer if i push some Buttons.Mouse has light on Well. seems Screen works. I did not get the Software. It is Snow leopard on but i don't know if re-installing would help or if i need the Pack for 3150.- or what it cost. I also don't know if not Video-Card or logic board fails
I'm looking at the specs page for the MacBook Pro and it reads this...
Your MacBook Pro comes standard with a 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive. Choose a hard drive with a faster speed for greater performance. Or you can choose a solid-state drive that offers enhanced durability.
Basically suggesting that the HDD option has a performance advantage over the SSD, but is this the case? I always thought SSDs could read & write quicker because they use solid-state flash memory as opposed to hard disks.
I want to go with the 256GB SSD but I want to know how it ranks in speed.
Let me start by saying I have swapped the ram in the computer and the problem persists. I've also tried resetting the PRAM. I have unplugged all devices except the keyboard and mouse. I have reformatted and installed OS X Leopard, Tiger and Snow Leopard. I have even encountered this issue while the computer was running from the install disk. I'm pretty sure software, ram and third party devices can be eliminated from the possible causes. The computer continues to run after the screen goes black. I am connected to it right now using screen sharing, so I know the computer is still working. Putting the computer to sleep and then waking it up temporarily brings the screen back until its next random blackout. I have opened the computer to replace a dead HD, so I suppose it is possible that I knocked something in the process, but I did that back in December and the problem is a relatively recent development. I would really prefer to fix this myself, if I could only figure out what the problem is.
I have been experiencing some unusual problems with my imac. While on the internet today my computer crashed on me twice, the first time the screen just showed a bunch of vertical lines, the second it flashed some random colors then went black. After the screen change the computer was unresponsive. I have a bad feeling, is it due to overheating, a bad logic board or something else. This is the first time I have ever experienced this on a mac. Has anyone had any simiar issues? Or am I up **** creek? I can't really afford a new computer seeing that I just bought an iPad (it comes Saturday). I am not sure if my computer is still under apple care and even if it was I won't get it back by the time I have to go back to college. I attached a screen shot of my computer temps.
When I turn my Imac, it goes from the white screen to a black screen, then blue and then desktop. The whole process is fast, but is not normal. (at least is not like my previous MBP or the videos that I have seen on youtube) At the black screen stage, I can see some boot up information, etc, It is fast so I am not able to read it all. It looks like when booting an old windows or dos machine How can I change this? Is this normal? It also shows the screen when I shut down.
