Small Black Vertical Lines follow my mouse pointer AND surround all ICONS

Hi Macboyyou,

Welcome to the boards.

Just a thought, but have you tried changing your screen rez back and forth to see if that changes anything? Good luck

Did this just happen after you upgraded to 10.5.5? What kind of video card do you have and exactly what PowerMac are you using? What kind of monitor?

It's possible reseating your video card would help. It's also possible that resetting the PRAM and/or pressing the PMU reset button might help. I would try the latter two before the first.

Do you have an external drive you can back up to by any chance, preferably a Firewire disk? Do you have an additional internal drive?

You could try starting up in safe mode also to see if it makes the lines go away. If they do that would mean some kind of system conflict.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564?viewlocale=en_US

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1455

You've also tried disconnecting and then reconnecting your monitor, right? What type of machine do you have? Single, dual processor etc. RAM .

Oh, to your last post do you have Universal Access enabled? Try turning that off. Try a few more resolutions and different Mhzs in the Displays control panel. It's encouraging but something is still off.

Oh #2. Does your display have any controls on it? I know on my old Sony CRT that I could reset it to factory settings. I'm wondering if you can do something like that as well.

Ok, does it get worse again when you start up the regular way? Check this page and see if you have this latest (albeit old) update.
Edit: http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/mac/macosx10-4x-3x-radeon.html

And finally the most important thing I can think of now. Do you have the original disks that came with the mac. Usually they are gray?

Message was edited by: Samsara

Cool, let me know if it reverts back to being really bad again.

Nah, always booting in safe mode isn't the way to go. And yes, it could very well be your video card. I've been trying to work you around that possibility but that may in fact be what it is. Just curious, what happens if you run your screensaver?

Anyway here's my summation of things you might try in the best order, I feel. I'm going to bed soon but you might be able to catch me if you have any questions. These are also in lieu of anyone else posting a more adequate answer.

1. Run Disk Utility after you've started up from your leopard system disk. Slim chance there that it might fix something.

2. Take out and reseat the video card. That might cure it.
http://www.info.apple.com/usen/cip/pdf/g5/073-0808.pdf

3. Get those original disks and run the Apple Hardware Test that is on one of them. That might tell you if your video card is bad.

4. Get a firewire drive to make a bootable clone of your system to. Look up Superduper on the net and use that. It's free for what you want to do now. It costs money for additional features. After you have made the clone, download the 10.5.5 Combo Update from Apples downloads page and reapply it to your system. Granted, if that doesn't work you'll be out the money for the drive, but you should really have a drive to back up to anyway. First for Data safety and then for troubleshooting a myriad of problems that can arise.

Lastly, you may have to consider getting a new video card. It would be good if you could take it to a mac genius at an Apple store near you but I know that lugging the towers around are heavy and awkward.

Well, that's the best I can come up with. I hope someone else chimes in with better info for you. Definitely try to get those original system disks. And yeah, video cards can go bad more often than we like. Good luck. Write back and let me and everyone else here know how you make out.

Message was edited by: Samsara