iBook Graphite: Display bigger than screen!
 

My wife's iBook is having some screen troubles. I'm not sure if anything happened prior to water getting spilled on it to cause this so I'll just summarize the problem. The iBook's got a 12" screen capable of a maximum 800 x 600 resolution. Currently it's behaving as if it's got a larger screen with a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768, which means that I can see the upper left 800 x 600 of the desktop but I can't see the right side or bottom because they're off screen. You can't see the application menu, hard drive icon or trash can. I tried zapping the PRAM, clean installing, initializing, reinstalling OS 9 from the original iBook software install disk and I even reset the open firmware. Still, no change in the screen or the distortions that sometimes appear. Is there anyway to fix this problem?

What is the resolution for the display set to?

It's currently set to 800 x 600 but after the screen started misbehaving it allowed me to set it to 1024 x 768, but I swtiched it back to 800 x 600.

do you have the zooming turned on/enabled?

Zooming? What's that?

Go to System Preferences, Universal Access.

The iBook is on OS 9.0 so I don't have that option.

Umm, upgrade?

I think (it's been about 3 years) that there is a control panel in OS 9 that is named something like universal access.

Seriously though, OS X is so much better than OS 9 that if you don't have a great reason for not upgrading, you should do it asap.

Try setting the display to 640 x 480 for a while if you can.

Thanks bruce, I'll give that a try.

As to installing OS X, I'd LOVE to but we have no money so getting a copy is not a priority right now. It came with my 17" PowerBook that I use for work and I love it. If I can afford to buy Tiger in a few months I'll give it a try on her iBook, provided it's still running ;)

Alrighty, guys. I installed OS X on her iBook and tried everything I knew to do and it STILL has a messed up screen. What's weird is that when the computer boots up and it's displaying the gray screen with the gray apple icon, it's normal and 800 x 600 but when the blue screen appears and the OS X start up window appears it jumps to being 1024 x 768 again BUT it's as if an 800 x 600 resolution has been set on an 1024 x 768 monitor except that I again can't see the right part of the screen or the bottom.

try to boot with extensions off and see if this happens. (shift key held down) you could try to trash the monitor prefs file also. (in the system folder/preferences)

You mentioned water spill in the iBook.
What does the System profiler think about the machine (especially video resolution) and does it match reality ?

If the machine hasn't dried out or the liquid somehow bridged exactly the right pins, maybe the hardware pretends to be something else when queried ?

To make sure it's not a system software issue, put the ibook in target mode, then boot your 17" powerbook with it.
Is video ok now ?
If so, the ibook hardware is probably causing the problem.

If we can confirm this, the easiest solution would probably be to figure out where the system software stores the physical resolution of the LCD for different generations of iBooks is stored and patch the appropriate value.

A quick fix to get some work done with the machine would be to connect an external monitor.

Okay, according to the System Profile the display resolution is 800 x 600 but that changes depending on what I set it too under System Preferences/Displays. I took a screenshot of the iBook's desktop using Grab, which showed the entire desktop, hard drives and all, and was 800 x 600.

I'm not sure how to put the iBook in target mode or boot my PowerBook with it. The only connections available on the iBook are USB 1.1., ethernet and modem. I don't have a way to hook another monitor to it.

Initially the iBook's system was OS 9 but I re-initialized the drive and reinstalled OS 9, which didn't help. Then I got a copy of OS X Panther, re-initialized it again and installed the OS. Since then, I re-tried zapping the PRAM, resetting the open firmware (nvram-reset) and ran TechTools just to see if it picked up anything squirrelly, which it didn't.

Now, like I said before, when I hit the power button to boot up ol' Gertrude, I see the gray screen with the darker gray apple icon and spinning process icon and it's the right size and placement for an 800 x 600 screen. It just changes once it goes to the blue screen. For a second you can see the mouse icon in the upper left of the screen and it's the correct size so the screen is fine. Then the screen changes to the larger size and the right and bottom are off the screen.

What happens when you try to change resolutions?

I hate to say it, but I think you've got a really funky hardware problem. I hope not, but if you've got the same problem with a spankin new OS, I don't see how it could be anything other than hardware.

When I change resolutions the screen still acts like it's bigger than it actually is and the right and bottom are still off screen. 1024 x 768 shouldn't even be one of the options but it allows me to select it.

Is it possible that the spill hasn't completely dried out?

Even if the spill has completely dried out, it likely left contamination behind. Even pure distilled water would wash the already present dust into places it shouldn't be, causing opens in connectors or shorts across contacts. The best solution would require disassembly and a thorough cleaning. Use only pure isopropyl alcohol as a cleaning agent where needed. This is available at most Electronic Part stores.

If that was my machine, before risking to fry the mobo by some cleaning attempt that may or may not work, I'd try to figure out how to patch the OS.

Basically, we'd first need to find out what type of iBook the machine believes to be now, then patch the physical LCD video resolution accordingly.

Actually I have no idea where that would be, but I am pretty sure that some of the old hands in the forum will know...

Just thought I'd reply here, even though it's a few years later, because I had the same problem and found a solution. This seems to be the only discussion anywhere on the topic, so I thought I'd post in case someone else bumps into the same issue.

As I said, I had the same symptoms: my PowerBook 12" G4 1.5 GHz (OS X 10.4.11) thought its screen was bigger than it actually is. Just like metebelis3's iBook, everything looked correct during start up, and then suddenly the screen jumped to its expanded size as soon as the Finder kicked in. I tried all the usual: repairing permissions, zapping the pram, cleaning caches with Onyx, trashing some Finder plists. No change across many reboots.

Jeffo and cwtnospam were on the right track in my case, with their suggestion to check "zooming." Most OS X zooming options can be found in System Preferences > Universal Access, under the "Seeing" tab. But on my machine, which is new enough to allow 2-finger touchpad actions, there's one semi-secret zooming command that still works even with zooming turned Off in Universal Access! If you hold the Ctrl key down and stroke upwards with 2 fingers on the touchpad, the screen zooms in at the cursor, creating exactly the kind of symptoms metebelis3 and I were seeing. (Stroke down to zoom back out.) This was mentioned somewhere on macintouch.com, I think. I guess at some point, I accidentally did that magic finger combination and zoomed in. Now that I've zoomed back out (Ctrl + 2-finger downstroke on touchpad), all is normal again.

Wow, that was hard to figure out! So I thought I'd share it.

By the way, that Ctrl-stroke action for zooming is incredibly handy, now that I know about it.

Addendum: The trick for zooming by using the Ctrl key and a 2-finger stroke on the trackpad is actually a preference that is settable in System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse, in the "Trackpad" tab. I guess I turned it on at one time and then forgot all about it! (I just found it again while resetting everything that was undone by zapping the pram.)