I have a co-worker who has a Mac G5 running OS X and is having a couple issues that sound hardware related (blue bar or something on her monitor), but knowing as little as I do about Macs (I’m not a complete moron, but don’t have nearly the skill set I do with PCs), and the fact that she doesn’t have a ‘net connection at her house for me to research on the fly, I don’t think I’d be able to help her. It’s a job for somebody who knows Macs FAR better than I.
Is there any local (or even non-local) Mac Gurus that read this site that could possibly take a couple e-mails or a phone call from her and help fix it (she understands there will be costs involved)? It may be a 30-second fix or a 30-minute fix, she just wants to have an idea and doesn’t want to have to drag her computer into Connecting Point to find out (as she lives in Lapine). Comment here if interested and I’ll pass off her contact info to you (or I’ll give her yours) and you can then hash it out with her.
Comments
Could be a faulty DVI cable or dusty DVI ports. Or, if her screen doesn’t use DVI, a problem with the DVI-VGA adaptor.
I’ve occasionally had flashing blue lines on my screen – I unplugged and re-seated the DVI cable and it was fine.
Ordinarily I’m all too happy to help out a fellow Mac-user, but the fact that she has no internet connection scares me silly.
It might be easier to figure out if we knew what version of OS X she was using (I’m guessing 10.4), when the last time she ran an update was (they do issue updates for OS X about every 2-3 months), and more about this blue bar.
Of course, it could be just like Neil T said and be entirely hardware related. (Re-seating the DVI adapter/cable seems like a good start to me.)
She lives in the middle of nowhere, which is why she doesn’t have Internet. Even dial-up is worthless in Southern Deschutes County.
I’ll pass on your suggestions. Thanks, gents!
Have her use Grab, a screen capture utilility, to get a visual on the blue bar problem… I guess then she could put it on a thumb drive or cd and have you post it from work…
Once in Grab the capture command is command Z. Command is the key directly to the left and right of the space bar.