Spots on screen and browser crashing.

[caileach]

13" Mid 2012 MBP made in early 2016 with original HD and running on High Sierra, the ram was upgraded to 16gb several years ago.

When using Firefox last night, colored dots appeared on the screen and the browser crashed.
Firefox is now unusable, it crashes on the google home page which gets covered with yellow, green and blue dots.

Safari seems be usable but it gets blue or white dots on light areas of pages and red/purple/pink dots on images/media/ads.
Youtube videos have moving coloured dots like rain, when the the video isn't on fullscreen, the white areas of the screen is clear of dots.

Photos are covered in dots.

The statusbar has a few purple dots.

Videos on Quicktime have the rain of dots like youtube.

Screenshots/images have dots and small lines when opened with Preview.

Audio and music still plays fine.
PDF's open fine on Adobe reader but have spots in Preview.
Images that have spots/lines on Preview, look normal when opened on Gimp.

I've occasionally noticed it's been running a bit hot lately, after the spots and crashes started happening, I took the back cover off and found the heatsink full of dust.

Disc utility didn't show any problems and pram reset did nothing.


Any ideas on what's wrong with it and can it be saved?

 

[casperes1996]

Seems like a weird gpu defect

 

[Cabin]

Seems like a weird gpu defect

Not having a lot of knowledge in this area but I agree that it might be your GPU that failed.

 

[Fishrrman]

Unless you can get this repaired CHEAPLY (under $100), might be time to start considering a replacement.

Something to try (won't hurt anything):
Try a safe boot.
From a power-off condition, press and HOLD (and keep holding) the shift key and then press the power-on button. Keep holding the shift key down for a while.

This will bypass a discrete GPU and run on integrated graphics.
Hmmm.... did the 13" model of the 2012 MBP even have "discrete" graphics?

Do you have an external display you could try with it?

 

[casperes1996]

Hmmm.... did the 13" model of the 2012 MBP even have "discrete" graphics?

Nope. Defects in the iGPU are less common but possible though

 

[caileach]

Thanks all, the GPU is what I was thinking it is too.

I might look for a replacement laptop or a see if I can find a replacement logic board/donor laptop.