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Unusual Screen Distortion

imaccooper

imaccooper

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 29, 2014
318
108
North Carolina
I have a 2011 Macbook Air that has been working great since i have had it. A couple days ago it began something unusual that i cannot figure out or find anyone that has experienced the same thing. When i open the computer, it will come on like normal then suddenly the screen majorly distorts (looks like small lines of pixels shift randomly up or down completely distorting the image but i can still tell the image is supposed to be my blue background). After no more than 1 second the image returns to normal and I have no trouble out of it while I am using it. I would not be worried if it was only once, but it has done this the past 3 or 4 times I opened it, but it always goes immediately back to normal and has never given me problems while working. Any suggestions on causes, potential fixes or possible further issues are welcome.

Before anyone asks, I have not upgraded anything on the computer and have not recently downloaded any software. I also have not messed with any screen resolution settings (or any other settings) since i set them when i bought the machine.
 
H

HarryWarden

macrumors 6502a
Oct 27, 2012
608
121
imaccooper said:
I have a 2011 Macbook Air that has been working great since i have had it. A couple days ago it began something unusual that i cannot figure out or find anyone that has experienced the same thing. When i open the computer, it will come on like normal then suddenly the screen majorly distorts (looks like small lines of pixels shift randomly up or down completely distorting the image but i can still tell the image is supposed to be my blue background). After no more than 1 second the image returns to normal and I have no trouble out of it while I am using it. I would not be worried if it was only once, but it has done this the past 3 or 4 times I opened it, but it always goes immediately back to normal and has never given me problems while working. Any suggestions on causes, potential fixes or possible further issues are welcome.

Before anyone asks, I have not upgraded anything on the computer and have not recently downloaded any software. I also have not messed with any screen resolution settings (or any other settings) since i set them when i bought the machine.
Click to expand...

If at all possible, I would take it to an Apple Store and recreate the behavior for them. Not sure if anything can be done but someone there would know if there is.
 
imaccooper

imaccooper

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 29, 2014
318
108
North Carolina
Update

I have continued to investigate and found that the problem only occurs when the computer has gone to sleep/turned off. I closed the computer and quickly reopened it and there was no distortion, but if i wait a few minutes until the computer goes to sleep then the unusual distortion is there a few moments after i open the computer. Any further suggestions or similar experiences would be appreciated.
 
C

Cubytus

macrumors 65816
Mar 2, 2007
1,436
18
Well it still doesn't exclude the video cable. By heating up, your computer may disrupt sensitive connections. Long ago I had a desktop PC that wouldn't turn the screen on unless it was sufficiently warm. Luckily, as it had an old-school CPU, it took 5 to 10 minutes of repeatedly restarting it with the keyboard before it got warm enough I could see something. Never had a disk corruption issue as I knew very well what was its normal timing. Also one reason why I refrained to clean up the dust inside.
 
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