Help: Weird bars/strips appearing on screen

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Level 1

9 points

Help: Weird bars/strips appearing on screen

Hi all, my macbook air 13 inch (mid 2011) running 10.8.2 has recently been suffering from weird black bars popping up occasionally across different screens sometimes making file names or docks icons half transparent or disappearing.

I brought it into the apple store and they have changed the logic board but it didn't help. I'm thinking it might be a Mac OSX issue or some kinds of software issue. I haven't tried erasing and reinstalling Mountain Lion but wanted to hear your thoughts first.

Attaching some screenshots.

Thanks very much guys!!! 🙂

MacBook Air, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Dec 27, 2012 7:55 AM

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Answer 1

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darkedge3

Level 1

19 points

Dec 27, 2012 1:25 PM in response to atytse

This looks very much like a RAM issue... That being that a piece of software looks to be holding onto certain portions of it when it has been closed.

Firstly I would fire up activity monitor to see if there is any one program hogging a bunch of RAM.

The good news: It is most likely solvable by restarting the machine, and immediately hold Control+Alt+P+R until you hear the startup 'gong' for the second time. Then let is startup normally

The bad news: It may be a physical RAM issue. Less likely, but possible - this has happened to me before, and started out as similar lines, but got worse until the RAM chip was completely messed up and had to be replaced. I would suggest that if the first option doesnt work, run a RAM check to find out whats up.

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