2011 Macbook Air: Scrambled Screen When Waking From Sleep

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2011 Macbook Air: Scrambled Screen When Waking From Sleep

This is regarding my 2011 Macbook 13" base model running Lion (the latest version, which I believe is 10.7.2). I've owned it since August 2011, and honestly haven't used it very frequently. It has sustained no damages (ie. drops, spills, or anything...).

Sometimes, quite frequently, my Air's screen will look like this in the log-in screen after waking it from full sleep. It looks like the image is scrambled. Once I log in, the screen goes back to normal. When it happens, it happens across different areas of the screen each time. My Air is up to date with software, and I've also attempted rebooting, and rebooting doing a PRAM reset. The scrambled screen still remains.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a sign of a failing screen to come? Or a failing graphics card? What is it?

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Nov 11, 2011 8:49 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 14, 2011 10:20 PM in response to inhalewaste

Actually, I have the same but only when I run Win7 in Parallels.

However, the 27" screen keeps turnng itself off when in Mac OS.

So, very unhappy and not sure it it is the display or the MBA, which is very very new!

Anyone have a sensible resolution since Apple support are very quiet about this...

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Answer 2

Nov 22, 2011 8:59 AM in response to inhalewaste

I have the exact same thing on my MacBook Pro 13", Mid 2010. (Model A1278) I have not been able to capture it as it disapears very quickly for me.

I don't know exactly when it started to happen but I'm also running 10.7.2 since a while back.

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Answer 3

Paulaski

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12 points

Nov 24, 2011 9:34 AM in response to inhalewaste

See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3214368?answerId=16828138022#16828138022, where I and others have been having similar problems, and I've been told there will be a software update to fix this.

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Answer 4

inhalewaste Author

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Nov 24, 2011 9:51 AM in response to Paulaski

Thank you Paulaski for posting that. Looking forward to the fix from Apple.

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Answer 5

Jan 11, 2012 4:28 AM in response to inhalewaste

I am having the same issue, MacBook Air 13", brand new. To solve it I just change Spaces after waking it up and the screen refreshes itself and look normal again.

Images and more info

http://fastblog.marcogomes.com/macbook-air-com-tela-embaralhada-apos-acordar

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Answer 6

May 18, 2012 4:06 AM in response to marcogomes

I have several Mac desktop and laptop computers purchased over a span of time ranging from 2008 until now and each device which has Lion installed exhibits this problem in one form or another. I've been able to work-around the issue by changing the energy saving settings in preferences to not allow the device to go to sleep when not in use.

I've tested this theory on two of my Mac's while leaving the the energy settings set to go to sleep on the others. The mac's which have the sleep settings disabled no longer have the scrambled screen and work perfectly fine for weeks on end. The devices which still have the sleep setting enabled exhibit problems ranging from the computer freezing, snake like graphic artifacts, and scrammbled screen's. For the time being I've disabled the sleep settings on all my computer devices and will try to reenable them in a few months after a patch detailing a fix is published.

System Preferences -> (Hardware) Energy Saver ->

Computer Sleep -> Never

Display Sleep - 1 Hr

No - Put hard Disks to sleep when possible

Yes - Wake for network access

Yes - Allow power button to put the computer to sleep

Yes - Automatically reduce brightness before display goes to sleep

No - Startup automatically after power failure

No - Restart automatically if the computer freezes

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