Mac question..top line of screen black

[kaneohe]

The very top "line" of the monitor used to be a normal white?/lt gray color so you could easily read the words/symbols up there.....like the wifi connection symbol. Now it is black and though, at certain angles, you can kind of read parts of it, mostly it is just guessing about where something used to be and poking around until you get lucky. How to change it back and what caused it change in the first place?

this is a Macbook about 3 yrs old running Chrome, OSX 10.5.6

 

[MBAustin]

I'm not sure if this is it, but try going into System Preferences, Desktop and Screen Saver, and experiment with checking/unchecking "Translucent Menu Bar"

 

[kaneohe]

MBA......thanks for the suggestion. As you might imagine, I left the house this AM w/ this problem and now when I get home at night, the problem is
gone and DW is not here to admit fixing the problem (which I doubt).
.............so perhaps? it fixed itself ? I tried toggling that path as you suggested but I couldn't see any difference. I'll try that if/when the problem
comes back though.....never would have thought of that.

Anyway, thanks again for the input.

 

[MBAustin]

You're welcome. I got a new MacBook Pro last year so I'm on 10.7 Lion, but the old iMac is still on 10.5.x. I have this vague memory that something like you described happened once or twice on the old iMac, so it may just be one of those flaky computer things. (Full disclaimer: I have a degree in computer science. It doesn't help much in these situations!)