Photo images "scrambled" - unviewable (on 2011 MBA)

April 25 & 26 updates:

• Monday night (4/25), I backed up a bunch of folders/files to an external hard drive before calling Apple support in anticipation of perhaps needing to leave my MBA at the Apple "hospital" some time this week. Scheduled a call back for 9:15 Tuesday morning (4/26).
• Also on Monday night, around 9:30, after backing up the appropriate folders and erasing them and cleaning up trash, I installed the latest Adobe Flash Player that had been sitting there for 3 days. With NO reboot or shutdown/restart, all of a sudden, all the files that had pixelation were PERFECTLY FINE! I went back to all the articles I had up in tabs to save for PD, went back to photos on my hard drive -- all were perfect. Note that since I started having this problem mid-March, I had installed at least 1 or possibly 2 updates to Adobe Flash. Is a bad Adobe Flash part of the problem???!!!!
• Tuesday, 4/26: Spoke with Apple Support. Went through all the PD I had done, how long I've had the problem, and also updated her on what happened after installing the latest Adobe Flash. She said I had done everything she would have recommended (Safe Mode, resetting the NVRAM and SMC) and recommended an appointment at the Genius Bar.
• I have a 12:30 appointment at a Genius Bar Thursday, 4/28. I am keeping an eye on if the problem re-occurs with this latest Adobe Flash. Usually, the pixelation problem occurs about a day and half after a shutdown/restart. I have not done a shutdown or restart since Thursday night, 4/21. Adobe Flash was installed 9:30 p.m. 4/25, so in theory, I could see the problem by the end of today.

I will update the results of my Genius Bar visit. I am hoping to find out exactly what the problem is/was.

- lynnelovestorun

Update from April 28, 2016 visit to Danbury, CT, Apple Genius Bar:

Well, we still are not exactly sure what caused my problem, but we definitely believe part of it was at least 1 and possibly 2 bad Adobe Flash updates that I took within the 4-week period (mid-March to mid-April) when the problem consistently occurred.

As stated earlier, once I installed the latest Adobe Flash update the night of April 25, I no longer had the pixelation problem.

The in-store Apple customer service rep was very thorough and did a complete hardware diagnostics check, as well as checking software. He did not find anything wrong, per se. The only "problem" was that my MBA had a high swap rate (looking at the System Activity monitor). I tend to keep a lot of Safari tabs open as "reminders" to do things, so now I am trying to be better about that. He said that would also contribute to the fan kicking on at times and sometimes getting that glitchy delay when typing and getting the pinwheel of death.

I have rebooted twice since the April 28 visit, but again, since that latest Adobe Flash update I took on April 25, my problem has gone away. It could be a combination of that plus the reset of both the NVRAM and the SMC, but I more suspicious of Adobe Flash.

Things are running well again so far: no pixelation, no pinwheel of death, no fan running hot and loud.

Thank you everyone who contributed to this discussion for PD, in particular DuggieDooby.

Hopefully this is IT! lynnelovestorun