One day I came down to find only a colorful, diagonally striped screen. I unplugged and rebooted to a jiggly mess that froze after a minute. I did the same routine, and it booted fine, but when the screensaver came on it went diagonal again.
I rebooted, turned off the desktop pix and screen saver and it was better for a while. Then, it did the same old trick after sleeping. Rebooted and turned off sleep.
I also turned off Classic startup, after rebuilding the desktop.
Everything was good for a few days, but it just went diagonal again.
Am I facing a hard drive meltdown or what? It could be some sort of corruption, but where?
I’m going to take it into the Apple Store next week, but I’d like to look less like and ID10T when I get there.
Doesn’t sound like a hard drive/data failure, it seems more like a video failure. Your video processor may be going kaput or the driver (the software bit) might be corrupt.
I had a similar experience. There was a recall, and in my case they just replaced the motherboard. A few days turnaround time for me. Try calling Apple support (I think it’s still 1-800-SOS-APPL). They might even be able to pre-order the motherboard so it’s waiting at the local Apple Store, and make an appointment for you, so you can drop it off and get it back with a minimum of hassle.
In the mean time, you’re making backups just in case, right?
I think they just replace the motherboard because the video card is part of it. I’m pretty sure my motherboard was replaced, but the paperwork is packed up at my new place so I can’t check. I know I was pretty sure I was hosed when the video went out, but the phone tech told me about the repair program.