Snow Leopard Graphics Corruption

Still broken in 10.6.4. I took my iMac to the Apple Store with this problem manifesting. After five days, they got back to me saying the hard drive was failing. I manually replaced the hard drive (no easy feat, but saves me over $300). Then, this evening, I get this:
http://tinypic.com/r/ipz7fp/3

It's a combination of the page just closed and the current one. These corrupted images shift in and out of visibility depending on whether Safari is active or not, though which state also switched in the process of taking the photo.

Now I'm getting random white lines through my code editor and the flash video, and additional video jitter that shouldn't be there.

Hardly a failing hard drive issue, Apple. :/

Hello

Is your MAC under warranty? I assume not as you said you replaced the hard drive yourself. In which case I'd take it back and tell them that they falsely diagnosed your problem wasting your time and money and get a wealth of screenshots of the issue occuring.

That or your could do an archive and install back to 10.6.0 and see if the issue occurs there. Then use the combo update to 10.6.4

I can 100% confirm this is a software issue. I began having the issue randomly with my 17" Macbook Pro (late 06) about 1 year ago. I had assumed it was a graphics card problem as well and simply lived with it because I figured I'd rather just upgrade to a new line of iMacs rather than extend the life of a somewhat abused 3 year old machine. After buying my brand new 27" iMac I decided since I used time machine for my Macbook Pro I could just migrate my information seamlessly to my new desktop. It worked spectacularly well! But after using it for a few hours the problem erupted yet again; the artifacting for me is most notable in finder windows because it completely obscures text and icons. It seems to occur for me most often after having opened media files using Plex, VLC, QuickTime, Preview, iPhoto, Aperture, etc. and also when folders or files are minimised and then maximised again. The bug seems to persist until I restart my computer, and remains dormant until something sets it off.

Unless my iMac came out of the box with this kind of defect (which I highly doubt), the problem has to be a software issue. I really hope that Apple devs patrol these forums. I would like to escalate this issue but I don't really know how; I'm pretty positive that going to the apple store for help is beyond helpful the techs there aren't certified to diagnose rare bugs like this. I haven't run into anyone else with this kind of problem, so I'm fairly sure the number of users affected by this is rather slim. I wish there were something more to be done about this.

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Sig.402

Thanks for the advice, but the Apple store charged me no money for their diagnostics. Also, this machine is over 4 years old. It wouldn't qualify for anything. I will, however, go have a chat with them about it.

Almost feels that 10.6.3 drivers remain.

I have an iMac with an ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics card and i sometimes experience text corruption in finder. this is usually solved by logging out and back in again.
seems to occur at random, at most once a week.
I have installed temperature monitor and nothing is over 60º C so it shouldn't be an overheating problem.

here are some screenshots:
[IMG] http://i31.tinypic.com/szh8bp.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG] http://i30.tinypic.com/ngyd5e.jpg[/IMG]

the odd thing is that this only effects finder and, occasionally, some other applications.
the same menu in safari, for example, looks normal.

I hope this doesn't indicate a failing graphics card, as thats what killed my previous mac, an iMac G5.

I had (and still have on 10.6.4) the same issue you guys described. I bought a 17" i5 MacBook Pro (with the high-res display, if that makes a difference) basically the day they came out, so it's still covered under warranty.
When I first noticed the corruption I figured out that it only happens using the Intel graphics - if I unchecked "Automatic graphics switching" in the Energy Saver pref pane, it almost instantly went away, but came back as soon as I let it switch back to Intel graphics.

So I took it to an ASP and told them I believed the IGP was bad. I couldn't show them screen shots because all I'd captured was a black box the size of my desktop - no idea how that happened. I also got a kernel panic minutes after deciding I was gonna take the laptop to the shop, so I couldn't show them what was wrong. They were super nice about it and replaced the logic board anyway, even though they couldn't reproduce my issue, so kudos to them.

But now, less than a week later, the issue reappeared, and I did some more in-depth testing and figured out it was indeed Flash (10.1) corrupting my graphics - opening Activity Monitor and force quitting the Flash plugin task, then toggling graphics switching off and on again fixes the corruption reliably. Even without the toggling, it will gradually go away, presumably as OS X overwrites Flash's junk with actual display data again. The downside to this is that for Flash to work again, you'll have to restart Safari. Not a huge problem if you use Glims or any other plugin that restores open tabs, but still a nuisance...

I have not tested any browser except Safari, but it seems pretty clear to me that Flash is writing in parts of the RAM it really shouldn't be, namely the shared VRAM parts. I really hope Adobe - and possibly Apple, too, if there's a flaw in Safari - manage to fix this problem soon...

T045T: I am having the exact same problem (i7, high res) and have been posting as many places as possible. I have been going back and forth on whether or not this is hardware or software related...but I am leaning towards software since it happens with safari and flash. Here is my post on this same issue:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=12204904#12204904

and a photo of my problem:

http://i1208.photobucket.com/albums/cc376/drm31078/Apple%20Support/photo.jpg

Perhaps if I get ambitious I will start a new thread with links to all the threads I can find of people with the same problem...anything to get Apples attention on this. I have seen this issue described here and on Macrumors.com.

I am getting this exact same fault too. It's either the last Safari update or Apples graphics update or the new Flash.
I've uninstalled Flash and will see what happens. It's in no way hardware related because the machine has been working fine until these updates and I get no corruption doing anything else. Bit annoying having crap software, I really wouldn't be surprised if it's a issue with Flash and Safari caused by the fighting between the two companies?

Just wanted to add my artifact's screenshot to this thread.
http://i54.tinypic.com/21c5mr.jpg (Shot with phone since the macbook wasn't responding properly anymore)

Usually it happens when i play a 3d game, so i expected it to overheat but sometimes also it happens when just watching yt videos.

I seem to have fixed my issue, I rebooted into safe mode, uninstalled all Flash, then rebooted back into safe mode, installed Flash 9, tested and it worked fine in normal mode, rebooted back into safe mode, uninstalled Flash 9, rebooted again into safe mode, repaired disk permissions, rebooted back into safe mode, reinstalled OSX 10.6.4 patch, then again rebooted back into safe mode and repaired disk permissions again.

So far touch wood it's been fine. Apparently when you boot into safe mode it rewrites some things that can cause problems?
I have not had any graphics corruption in Safari or any stopping when I scroll a page with You Tube videos embedded in it.

I'm sorry to say that my 'fix' only worked for so long and I'm back to square one. It's basically down to Snow Leopards memory management, well it's total lack of it! Firefox dose the same slow downs, Chrome is fantastic but has the bug where it switches the discrete graphics on, so I'm stuck at present.
Currently my Playstation 3 and iPhone can outperform my £1700 MB Pro at internet browsing! They have no issues or problems what so ever.
Has Apple just TOTALLY given up on any quality control with it's computers and OS? My mums Macbook with Leopard outperforms my computer! Sort it out Apple...... that's what your paid to do...

I don't consider 90% of my CPU and 2GB or actual and virtual ram to browse the internet is a particularly efficient way to use a computer!

never fixed my problem, so I got my $ back. Reverted back to Tiger. Screw it.

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13036140#13036140

Thanks for pointing out the Flash connection. I had the issue when viewing a three-page PDF document with Safari's PDF viewer (not the via Adobe's plug-in, which is not 64-bit). The artifacts flashed (no pun intended) across the Safari window when scrolling from one set of pages to the next. Later, when looking at some of the pictures in this thread that were hosted externally, Flash crashed. Going back to the same PDF document immediately after that, the artifacts were gone.