cursor changes to a square and leaves a trace when moved..help!

I am having exactly the same problem.

Any solution yet?

Richard

Me too.... exactly same problem....

First my 2008, 24" iMac running 10.7.4. Yes, I had the

'log out after n minutes' checked, so let's see if it fixes the problem with it unchecked.

Then, I used migration assistant to move everything over to my new 27" iMac (2012).... and bam!!! Not cool! It's doing the same thing on my new machine!! 😟

I've deslected the same "log out after..." so we'll see if it fixes the problem on both machines.

Hey Everyone,

Has this issue been resolved yet. My daughters computer is doing the same thing. Is it the Auto Log Off? Did disabling it help?

Thanks,

Mike

I just ran into this with a client and I am thinking it is a bad WindowServer preference, causing a crash of WindowServer and an immediate logout. I will remotely log into her machine tomorrow and purge those prefs, will report later.

I have had this exact same problem, on more than one machine. One is an iMac and the other an old Mac Pro. No clues yet as to what coudl be causing it. The iMac was migrated from a prior machine. I wonder if that's part of the issue.

I think the answer is here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4135?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

It looks like this occurs when you have the machine set to log you out after a period of inactivity but the screen has gone to sleep prior to this.

The suggestion 2 in this link did not work for me.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4135?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I set display sleep to 6 minutes and kept logout time at 5 minutes but still grey square and trace appeared.

Also, there is no way, as suggested in the 1st paragraph of the article, to find the login screen with user icons.

However, I closed the lid and re-opened it. Login screen appeared and I could login again and things are back to normal.

Nonetheless, as a matter of courtesy (only), I rated this article 3 Stars.

Hope the above could be of help.

I'm having the exact same problem with my MacBook Pro. After it got infected with some malware or a virus I did a complete and total drive wipe. I started from scratch with a new download of Mountain Lion and the used Migration Assistant to reload applications. This problem started immediately after the migration, though eveything else seems OK now.

None of the suggestions above have worked for me. I've been a diehard Mac user and Apple evangelist since 1989 and this is only the second instance in all those years I've had to wipe a drive and start from scratch, but this one has me flummoxed.

It just might be time to buy one of those cheap ChromeBooks, as I've already lost way too many valuable hours trying to fix this issue and there seems to be no answer in sight, nor support response from Apple on this one.

Did you try turning off auto-logout?

Yes, I've done that along with the few other things recommended here. This is really killing me, and it's a shame because something as basic as this would NEVER have been released if Steve Jobs was still around. You'd think with the thousands of employees Apple has this would have happened to someone in pre-release of Mountain Lion, and that they would have fixed it before shipping.

Then...there's the whole issue of not monitoring these discussion boards so that they could at least provide a response. Thousands of employees and no one responds? Additional thousands of employees in Apple stores worldwide and no response from any of these "Geniuses"? What Apple needs at this point is a few "Damage Control Geniuses".

I'm emailing Walter Mossberg and some other tech journalists I know personallywith a 10 seciond screen grab movie of this fatal effort on Apple's part. People should know that Apple is now letting stuff like this slip past the QC Control team in the name of "ship it now, get it out the door, get the money rolling in. We'll deal with it later." That was always the Microsoft way of dealing with things, and unfortunately that way of thinking has now insidiously crept into the Apple core mindset as well.

Such a shame.