Red and green square dots?

thanks for the update, count me among the many dot victims. based on 9 pages of comments it would seem pretty likley that it's a sw compatibility issue. fwiw to add a data point ... on my imac (mid 2011 27" 10.6.8, 16gb ram) the problem almost always starts when a thumbnail of qt file is displyed in finder ... the colors in the the tumb are pixelated and the next click produces bands of colored sqaures acorss the display. sometimes the system freezes other times it goes away as the screen refreshes. i've tried just about all of the suggestions in this thread short of a fresh install ... which is a huge hassle and doesn't seem to alleviate the problem any more than a reboot with an smc reset for good measure.

obvioulsy, apple has screwed up, yet again. but what really irks the crap out of me is that the solutiuon is to buy a new imac. i've thought about this too ... but i'm so fed up with apple i'm not sure the next system i buy will be a mac ... i started usng macs years ago maninly to use fcp for video editing ... i havent and won't switch to fcpx, premiere pro has come a long way and suits me just fine. every time i think about upgrading to mavericks i read the reviews and just can't bring myself to do it. ios7 ... a pos.

so ... i've got a 3 yo machine which cost 2 grand and no upgrade path.

i love apple's design asthetic but it's feeling more and more like a russian hooker who's never satisified no matter how much jewlery you buy her and doesnt look very good in the morning without her makeup.

i'm fed up - as far as i'm concerned apple has jumped the shark.

JMF, no protec6, only rEFIt Blesser.

Am I the only one in this forum that is having these issues with a MacBook Pro? Seems like everyone else is running the 27" iMac.

Haven't tried any hail marry's, but I've found something that might work for you guys. I live in the San Diego area, but have been in Las Vegas for the past 2 days. NO DOTS. Not on windows, mac or linux (though linux has always been clean). Travel to vegas and see if that helps. [This method is at least more effective than anything aPPLE is offering up.]

And, I'm on 10.6.7... how do I start QMaster... and what is it? Or, is it only something you 27-inchers have?

Also, below is a screenshot of what Spotlight brings up when I search "*** is wrong with my mac".

hahaha...awesome.

yep, greggfromsf--I feel your pain. I too have no upgrade path with my 2010 iMac, it was glitching bad yesterday, 5x hard-resets. Really random: fairly stable and glitch free immediately after a clean Mavericks install and 1 week into this clean OSX, it's behaving badly again. This a software problem 9 out 10. We didn't ask Apple to combo this motherboard, driver, GPU and OS when we bought these machines new. We expected it to work flawlessly.

Over it...thankfully, my Russian girlfirends can be upgraded without a $19.99 phone call to tech support that gets you nowhere. Granted, broken English is a pain to hear when dealing with a small crisis, but at least you can get to the bottom of the problem with softgoods and alcohol...and the occasional $50 lunch where she prods me about my 5 & 10 year plan.

iMac 2010: Breaking Bad. Where's Walter White when we need him.

As to removing programs that seem to faciliatate display vulnerabilities, I have downloaded a program called LaunchControl that helps remove residual Agents and Daemons from suspsects like Drobo softwarel etc.

jmf

Has anyone noticed the glitching & crashig only occurs when you're running Safari? I've isolated 99% of my freezing and pixelated screen issues to launching Safari.

Going to delete Safari on my iMac and try Chrome unless someone knows a more stable browser...

Crazy. I run EyeTV, AutoCad and a massive iTunes library simultaneously without flashing pixels or freezing/crahing. But the minute I open Safari, absolute chaos ensues until I close the app or restart the computer. Also, it gets so bad, that I need to reset the PRAM. This is the only way I was able to compose this message without a crash or a freeze. Almost tossed in the towel in an attempt to write this message on my iMac, consirdered resorting to my iPhone for Safari. So, yeah, no more Safari I guess....

EDIT: Yep, just installed Chrome, much better stability. I get an occasional wierd vertical glitch in the display on occassion, which quickly recovers or corrects itselt (via screen refresh), but I currently am not seeing any pixels or flassing garbage. in Chrome. There are a couple flashing blue pixels on the desktop, but the don't migrate over Mail app or Chrome, and they can be erased when I drag a brower window over them.

I'll update in a few days. My system is 2010 iMac 27" with a clean install OSX Mavericks. 5750 ATI Radeon. 2.93 i7 w/16gb Ram

I took a late 2010 27" i7 iMac in to the Apple store to get repaired. Luckily the pink dots showed up as soon as the Genius logged into the Mac. He took screen shots and ran a diagnostic on it. Nothing showed up on the diagnostic, but he was convinced that the problem was with the graphics card. So, they ordered a new graphics card and a new logic board just in case. The total cost was around $800. Luckily, it's still under apple care (4 year ARA for the win). They said it should be ready in a few days. I'll report back when i get it back.

My update is that I have not had the issue's symptoms reappear since my Apple Certified Repair shop replaced my video card before the holiday trip I took (knock on wood).

I have used iTunes and Safari quite a bit since then as well.

Is that the only thing they replaced? At what cost? What machine? I don't understand how something costs you money while simultaneously is covered under Apple Care. What is ARA for the win?

Sounds like this issue is believed to be entirely hardware for Apple. I know I can replace my own graphics card for $550 in materials, but this "we'll order a logic board just in case" make me belive they have no idea what the fix is except a critical rebuild. If that's the case, I'd love to know what people are actually paying to have this done out of Apple Care Warranty. I thought Apple Care was only 3 years from purchase date? How can a 2010 Mac be still covered under Apple Care?

as evidence of just how insidious this issue is ... i did the exact oppposite (removed chrome) and got the same temporary result. i personally belive the issue has to do with some codec incompatability. i dont know nearly enough about graphics firmware, drivers or the guts of qucktime to even guess at a solution but i have narrowed the initaiting event to the rendering of thumbnails rendered from dv (tape) captured in final cut ...

Maybe someone who knows more than i do can weigh in. fwiw, how come there's a not a single comment from an apple rep in this thread?

Also, Graphics Card Details:

HayMoose, I'm totally lost: how does a 3 year year Apple Care term still cover your 2010 Mac... yet you are on the hook for $800? What is ARA for the win??

I can't speak for everyone, but what the ****. Someone explain what a critical rebuild would cost--without Apple Care--for an iMac 27" 2.93 i7 2010. I tried calling Apple, they wanted $20 to tell me to drive it to a Genius Bar. But I live 100miles from the closest one.

Last I checked this is the 21st century. And I still can't get a quote on this repair cost. So dumb.

Sorry, I'm posting in between covering as Mr. Mom today.

Mine is still covered under AppleCare until May 2014. It was the mid-2011 release of the first Thunderbolt version of the 21" iMac.

I'll be happy to call me repair guy and ask what my repair would have cost me outside of warranty. they are closed until Monday however.

I believe SOUL was referring to my post. Sorry if i wasn't clear. I have a 4 year Apple Repair Agreement on the 2010 imac, so it is covered until August 2014. The cost to rebuild (replace the graphics card and logic board) is around $800 and that is what i would have to pay if i DIDN'T have the ARA. I don't have the exact break down.

cool thanks, Denmoff77. That's actually a decent price for critical rebuild/repair when compared to doing this yourself. The video card is ~$560, a 2.93 i7 logic board is at least $1.2K. Pawning a defective system--even if it's entirely software related is $100, so there's incentive to have it rebuilt through Apple Repair.

As far as voodoo OS tweaks to keep my system on life support, I been really happy with not using Safari at all. Using Chrome with a fresh copy of OSX Mavericks, dissabled all my sleep/energy saving modes & schedules. Nice and stable, an occasional yellow and blue pixel patch. Safari + Mavericks + 2010 iMac = Suffering.

Disabling Quartz Extreme is so far the first and only solution that has made any progress. Thank you for suggesting this, and I hope more folks can think along these lines...is it possible to disable the graphics card's accelleration alltogether? Or change it into a different mode?

The problem is not completely gone--the blotches to show back up on occasion, but are short lived. At least in the last few days that I've had this. Of course scolling is a bit slow and video frame rates aren't great, but nothing unlivable. For some reason gmail.com is extrememly slow but everything else seems to work.

Issuing the command as suggested didn't work immediately so I issued it as super user and rebooted, and there is a clear difference. To repeat the terminal command is

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver GLCompositor -dict tileHeight -int 0 tileWidth -int 0

I will reiterate to those chasing down 3rd party software or other add ons, that this issue appears even with a fresh install of mavericks on a brand new hard drive. It definitely has something to do with the software between the system and the graphics card, and as others have said running windows or linux with their drivers work fine. We need to find a way to change some configuration or driver version for the radeon 5750.