graphic/memory problem MacBook OS X

J

Jenny81

Registered
Hi,

I have a MacBook from 2008. A few months ago I upgraded to snowleopard and after that at times my screen get completely messed up in different ways, two examples attached. It can be only a second or a minute or longer, and it only happens now and then. I also think the computer is really slow compared to before. Now I am wondering if anyone knows if this could have a relation to installing snowleopard, if I should re-install it, or if it could be that I have too little RAM (2GB)? Or could it be related to the graphic card? Any ideas and very thorough explanation would be greatly appreciated!
 

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Usually that would look like something would be wrong with your graphics card. But with Macbook early 2008 (yours) or earlier, the graphics part of the system was using a part of RAM sharing it with the system (details). That used 160 MB of your RAM for the graphics, leaving you 1.84 GB for the system.

You could run memtest or check with the AHT hardware test (see FAQ section for howto) to see if it reports any problems with the RAM or graphics. Make sure you run the test at least a few hours, as sometimes RAM issues take time to be caught. It could be that your newer OS is using the memory more intensively, or it could have simply failed over time.

There are also a few other things to look for. How full is the drive? Make sure at least 15 % of the hard drive space is free (so that the system can heal itself). Too full a disk often causes slowness and erratic behavior of various degrees. There may also be some error messages showing in Console (/Applications/Utilities) when these graphics errors or slowness occurs. (With graphical errors it's less likely they would show in Console than for the issues behind the slowness, but it is still good to check). But definitely test your RAM.

If you have other pieces of same type of RAM, known good, you could also swap the RAM and see if that would simply fix it.
 
Thank you! I will for sure do the tests then. I had planned to upgrade to 4 GB but thought if the computer is on the verge of breaking down that's no use. I have 26 BG out of 160 free on the harddrive.
 
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