Macbook Help

[Orangutan]

Any suggestions to the following problem will be appreciated. Here’s what happened.

I was doing my usual nightly backup to my two USB flash drives. After dragging over a couple of files and completing the first save I grabbed a file and dragged it to my second USB drive. At that point my MacBook completely froze, I could not perform a force quit of anything so I shut off the computer. I rebooted and everything came back as usual, with all the applications opening that I designate at startup.

The problem is that the colors are extremely overly saturated. The white is very hot, and I’ve lost the outline of the pages on all my apps, Word, Quicken, Cal,. Many of the tool bar icons in applications are unreadable and washed out, as well as many of the fonts. The Day does not appear under the time when I click on it, it might be there but it’s not showing because of the problem. Photos are over saturated making them impossible to look at or edit. It’s quite annoying and I nothing I do is working to fix it.

I have checked the controls in the Displays preferences, and zapped the PRAM. I reinstalled OSX from the original disks, and downloaded the OSX 10.4.9 update. Nothing has changed.

Looking for some serious advice.

Thanks - O

[bubba]

You might have already tried this, but did you first select the correct display and then calibrate (select the 'calibrate' button)? If that doesn't work, you might try dragging the display prefs out of ~/System/Library/PreferencePanes/ restarting and going to the Displays prefs again. Sometimes preferences files get corrupted and creating new ones can help.

Unfortunately, logic board problems cause also cause such symptoms. If your Macbook is still under warranty, that's not a problem, and you could also get free assistance to help diagnose the problem.

[danone]

are only photos oversaturated? or the main screen as well?

what photo editor are you using?

[nikster]

i agree with bubba, display calibration will help.

first, go to utilities -> Disk Utility and do a "repair permissions" on the main hard drive. Then check for errors (likely there are none).

After you have repaired permissions do this

- System Preferences, Display

- Select "Colors" tab

- Select "Calibration.." button

Turn on "expert" mode in the calibration assistant and follow all steps.

Then let us know if that fixed the problem. Dumping the existing preferences for display may be a good idea too but I am not sure what they are called. You should not dump _all_ your preferences, just the ones having to do with display calibration.

I used to have a powerbook where some calibration could be done using an odd combination of command/ctrl/shift keys and the left/right arrow buttons. But I can't find a reference to this now, and it doesn't work on my iBook so I don't know about that.

[bubba]

oops... don't delete the Display Prefs pane as I recommended above (doh).

Display Preferences are :

user/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.preference.displays....

Or just search on "display" and you will see them in Spotlight.

Better yet, if you are still under warranty, give the AppleCentre a call for free advice. or take it in to them. They really do provide outstanding warranty service and they speak English as well.

[Orangutan]

Did another install without keeping my prefs, everything back to normal. Rebuilding everything now.

Many thanks for the tips.

-O