Chosen Solution
Boots to only to apple logo then grey screen with vertical bars in grey, white and black. However, it does boot all the way to desktop in Safe mode, still has the bars on right side however. AHT, even the extended one, said “no problems found”. External monitor shows the same vertical stripes (however, on the left side of the screen!) I am ready to take out the GE Force 8800 GS and do the fix, if you say this is likely my issue. Can you please advise me on 1) is it my graphics card? and 2) how exactly to do the reflow of solder with the hardware Mayer reference from Ebay ?
From way you’ve stated it does sound like your GPU card is failing. Here’s the part info for the replacement part. Bars tend to be bad Video RAM so you’ll likely need a new board 2007 24” iMac Video card661-4426 ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro, 256 MB Early 2008 24” iMac Video Cards661-4663 MXM III, M76XT+/256MB GDDR3 661-4664 MXM III, G92GT+/512MB GDDR3 (CTO) We don’t have IFIXIT guide for your system, but this one will get you there: iMac Intel 24" EMC 2111 GPU Assembly Replacement You’ll need a good thermal paste for the GPU and you’ll need thermal pads for the RAM chips after you fully clean the old thermal paste & pads when you re-mount the heat sink.
OK, my GPU came back from “reballing”( $US 70) and now it is completely kaputt. Lesson learned. Reballing without chip replacement is a waste of money on these this GPUs. The 8800GS is a time bomb, no more, no less. Who wants my smoldering remains of a 24" 2008 iMac?
