MacBook – Strange lines and glitches appearing on screen on a Macbook

macbook proscreen

Lately I've been witnessing this weird visual glitch on the screen of my MacBook (non-retina 2012, hi-res screen):

glitch

I have had to take a picture of it because whenever I try to take a screenshot it goes away right before the screenshot is taken.

I thought this glitch only happened when I had Adobe Illustrator open, which is when I would see it appear more often, but I've now also caught it in situations where the application was not running (the picture above is one of those cases).

I cannot pinpoint the exact cause of this and I cannot tell whether it's a hardware or a software issue, but I can only say it's not one of those flickering effects that appear for a second and then vanish. This is actually very persistent and will only go away when I switch to another application or in some way move the current window.

Does anybody know what this is and what might cause it?

Here are more pictures:


Best Answer

Well, it looks like you may need a visit to the nearest Apple Store,
but first try downloading SMCFanControl: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23049/smcfancontrol and try turning up the fan speed to cool the overheated graphics card and see if that helps.
Please note that I am not sure whether the fan speed on the MacBook is adjustable, but it's certainly worth a try.