Line of pixels freezing?

HipHopTrex said:

I'm not sure if the title is the most apt description given that when I google the issue the images associated with how i described it. It's a new 2013 Air. 4gb ram, 126ssd.

But basically typically when I'm viewing images in preview and close the app, a line of pixels across my screen (horizontally) just freezes. And by that I mean that part of the image stays on the screen, but it's a row of pixels. Images from my google search sometimes showed random white lines, or black lines. Not for more than a few seconds. I can even move my mouse to the line of pixels and it goes back to working 100%. It happens on a daily basis (or near daily anyways) I've had the machine for two weeks.

I bought it on Amazon so I may try and see if they'll take it back despite it not being a total lemon. But if there's a quick fix offered here I'd love to try it first.

Thanks for any help or suggestions you can offer.

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Never heard of such a problem with the Air line. Retina MBP has had some image retention problems, which this sounds similar. I'd personally return it. Amazon will surely take it back.

got mine yesterday. same config as yours.
I ve noticed on the safari tab that once in a while a tab is covered in a puzzle of pixels. I will use chrome to see if it s the same.
so far only one tab and when I hoover over it it displays normal.
not happy !!

cutienoua said:

got mine yesterday. same config as yours.
I ve noticed on the safari tab that once in a while a tab is covered in a puzzle of pixels. I will use chrome to see if it s the same.
so far only one tab and when I hoover over it it displays normal.
not happy !!

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yes, I have the same.. no idea what's wrong :-/

Happens on mine too (13" i7, 8GB, 256GB). I've had the machine for a few weeks now and I first noticed it clearly today. I use Windows 7 (bootcamp) and the issue is exactly as you describe. When I close an application, one row of pixels remains static. The line sometimes disappears when I move the mouse and always when I do something that requires a larger screen update. It always seems to appear in the same place. Moving around the window before closing it and making the line appear, I've been able to confirm that it's a complete row of pixels that is affected.

Since the line sometimes stays longer, I've managed to take a screenshot while it's showing. The screenshot does not show the line.

Interestingly, a few times I've been able to move the mouse pointer over the line and the line does not go through the mouse pointer. In other words, the line is part of one of the rendered layer in memory and the mouse pointer's layer is then rendered on top of it. This means that the corruption happens somewhere in the GPU pipeline and the LCD itself is not at fault.

At first, I thought it was a memory issue, i.e. defective RAM. However, it seems unlikely that a whole row of pixels would be affected, since that's 4-6 kB of memory. Running Windows 7's built-in memory diagnostics (two passes) did not reveal any errors, but I'm guessing that the GPU has already reserved all of its RAM when Windows runs its memory test, making it inaccessible to the test.

I've only been able to reproduce this issue using one application so far and it's usually quite reproducible, at least until you reboot. At one point, when the line appeared every time I tried to make it show, I opened another folder view and made it really small and just placed it at the top right of the screen. After doing that, I could not make the line appear again. Closing the small folder view, it was again possible to make the line show.

So, apart from confirming that I don't have an LCD issue, I haven't been able to make much progress. It could still be some sort of memory (HW) issue, but it might as well be a software issue in the GPU drivers (perhaps memory management). I'll report back if I make any progress.

I also sometimes see that pixel line. Using MBA 2013 i5/4/256. Never seen on windows 7(using via bootcamp). I think it is software issue because new MBA has new graphic card and software isnt optimized well.

Edgabimbam said:

I also sometimes see that pixel line. Using MBA 2013 i5/4/256. Never seen on windows 7(using via bootcamp). I think it is software issue because new MBA has new graphic card and software isnt optimized well.

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I hope you are right!
I really don't want to return it. The reason I bought this was because my older macbook pro 15 inch is dead due to video card issue.
History repeats itself!