On Friday, Apple posted details of a new service the company is offering to repair MacBook Pro notebooks affected by a flaw involving select Nvidia graphics chips. The manufacturer has also offered to reimburse customers who have already paid for a fix.

According to Macworld, graphics chip maker Nvidia acknowledged a problem in some of its chips that led to a higher-than-normal failure rate. The company took a US$200 million charge against earnings to cover warranty costs associated with the problem and Nvidia’s stock took a significant hit over the news along with the company has been facing with a lawsuit alleging securities violations over the way it handled the issue.

Per a technical bulletin posted to the its web site, Apple has stated that Nvidia "assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected,” the company later discovering that some MacBook Pros with Nvidia’s GeForce 8600 GT graphics processor may, in fact, be affected.

For MacBook Pro owners with affected systems, symptoms can include scrambled or distorted video on the computer screen as well as a lack of video on the computer screen or external display despite the fact that the notebook is powered on.

Affected systems can include the 17", 2.4 GHz MacBook Pros, 15", 2.4 and 2.2 GHz MacBook Pros, and MacBook Pros manufactured in early 2008, all with Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics chips. All such systems were made between May 2007 and September 2008.

“NVIDIA has worked diligently with Apple, as we have done with all of our customers and partners, to analyze notebooks and determine the cause of such problems,” said Nvidia Director of PR and Events Derek Perez.

“Our analysis shows that a failure in an Apple MacBook Pro notebook is remote. However, Apple, like other OEMs, decides on their own how to handle their warranty and repair programs, based upon their own quality standards. Regardless, we stand by our products, thus the reason why we set aside such a large reserve, and we have and will continue to work closely with Apple and their customers,” said Perez.

Users can use the following steps to check which graphics card is installed on their MacBook Pro:

Stay tuned for more details as they become available and if you've gone through this on your end, please let us know about it in the comments or forums.