MacBook Air 11" Screen "Flicker" and Freeze

same problem over there, MB Air 11.6" with 4gb ram, just rebooted from gray screen failure.

I installed a cpu, mem & ram monitor, but I didn't noticed any stress on the system before crashing.

Yesterday It crashed meanwhile my phone was charging via usb, today it crashed with an external monitor attached.

Message was edited by: gh3

Mine did so far only crash, when the usb-ethernet-adapter was connected.

yesterday for a presentation in my office, we were using my new MBA 11.6 2gb/64gb connected to a Dell 1610 projector via a apple mini display -> vga adaptor.
using extended desktop mode, not mirroring.


over the course of a 2 hour meeting, we experienced many times (at least 6-8 if not more) seeing video distortion on the projected image, and at least once saw on the MBA screen.

we saw two different kinds of this distortion--

1.bunches of horizontal white lines flickering and seeming to travel downwards
2. distortion that looks like tiny water ripples vibrating very quickly.

after multiple people in my meeting noticed this on a number of occasions we starting thinking this might have been a bad cable or connector. Then I looked online and saw the various blog posts describing this or a similar issue 😟

I actually pulled out my phone and took some video of the projector screen, and actually caught some of the 'white line' distortion on video.

I run this MBA connected to a company issued dell monitor throughout the day, and have not noticed the issues I saw yesterday when connected to the projector.

you can see the video I captured here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuOavh5813I

I'll be calling apple care today to get a case number started...

Did you apply the patch?

yes this MBA is up to date software wise...

I had this happen to me once thus far - the first time I connected my iPhone to the MBA (13.3").

I had the blue/grey screen freeze problem after leaving the computer for a few minutes, while running Safari and iWork. I had to force restart, and lost about 4 hours of work, as I didn't realise that iWork doesn't have an autosave feature. Computer was fully updated.

Bummer

Just got the 11.6 MBA today. Though I have not had any of these problems so far, it is concerning.

Message was edited by: Kim3113

Got my call back from Apple this morning. I could not recreate the freeze while on the phone, so the tech documented the issue, and I decided to wait for the next software update.

Well, not thirty minutes after getting off of the phone the flickering horizontal lines with freeze happened again. I took a couple of pictures and a short movie of the screen and immediately called back to Apple.

I was lucky enough to talk to a senior tech. He documented my issue in great detail, I sent him the movie, and he sent me a small application to record logs from the computer. He then took my issue and movie to the engineers who decided that they needed to get their hands on my computer.

A couple of phone calls later and I had an appointment at the Apple store to swap out my computer. I walked in, filled out a little bit of paperwork, and walked out with a new MacBook Air.

So far so good with the new machine. This issue aside, I am 100% sold on this new form factor. I don't think that I have been as happy to pack around a laptop since my PowerBook Duo 210 days. It is the perfect complement to my fully spec'd MacBook Pro.

Big thanks to the Apple Techs for making this exchange a painless experience.

I'm not sure so far, but still i assume that in my case, the usb-ethernet makes trouble. this morning there I have a internet connection even though the adapter does tell "no ip-adress".

I'm not willing to call apple, because there is no free-hotline in Germany, you got to pay a lot for waiting.

This happened once again today, this time my phone was connected via usb and an external monitor was connected via vga.

The first time the screen went gray, so i had to reboot, then after less than 10 minutes it went black.

At both the two moment the MB Air crashed it was in idle.
Yesterday it happened meanwhile I was working.

OK, I dont know if this question was asked b4: Is there a way for MBA owners to check some kind of software or hardware settings/versions and find out that they WILL have this issue before it happens? Or its not 100% known yet if its a hardware or software issue? If its hardware, then getting another machine will be just like picking a random one and hoping it wont have the same problem again. If you have bad luck you could end up with 2 or 3 of them that has this problem.

I don't think there is a pattern detected yet, but perhaps all of us who have problems should post our display/panel model number.

Mine is 9CF2.

I have experienced one single incident of a video glitch.

I would think its either video drivers, OR the video GPU itself, OR something with the motherboard, OR a combination of any of the 3. Might be easier to list all 3 factors and see if there is an occurring pattern.

Maybe it happens more with 11" than 13" ?

I connected the 11" MBA to a 27" LED Backlit Cinema display. At higher resolutions, it flickered or froze in Portal. No such problems with the 13" MBA.

The 11" only had 2G of RAM. Maybe it didn't have enough left to share with the external screen.