Red and green square dots?

I have noticed them a few months ago on my 2010 27 Inch Intel iMac. They are getting much worse - where there used to be about 6 of them now there are about 40. They seem to blink in correspondence to the hard drive activity. I think it is a screen hardware issue. This is my first Mac and and it was bought at the highest price I have ever payed for a computer. I am not too pleased.

Same symptoms here but the solution was not hardware. To my surprise it was software. Start by removing some of the programs that load on login. Go to Preferences/Users/Login Items and highlight a program that you do not need and hit the minus ➖ sign and reboot. I did this after hearing from apple tech that there were Apps that have incompatible (ill behaved) kernel extensions. Until then, I was convinced it was hardware.

jmf

I agree with Jack Fox.

I too disabled "SpeechSynthesisServer" and have not seen the symptoms since rebooting after disabling it.

My only challenge now is that I manager a late 2011 Mac Mini Server that has the same symptom and this service has never been set to run and I am still seeing the fragments.

These are the common Apps I run that the Server also has running

Dropbox

Parallels Desktop 9

iStat Menus

Growl

SpamSieve

Server running ESET 6 for Mac

iMac running Intego Security 2013

LogMeIn (It is a business Server running QB Server inside Win7, serving to Win7 clients.)

I'm just trying to find some commonality in the issue on the server since the symptoms present during Screen Sharing on feed from Mac Mini to the remote veiwing iMac as well.

Thanks, and great work Jack! The iMac has been issue free since the 11th.

hayMoose

Where did you find speechsynthesisserver? I don't see it in my Extentions unfortunately. Any idea what it is for?

Let us know if the problem has come back.

Go to Preferences/Users/Login Items and highlight a program that you do not need and hit the minus ➖ sign and reboot. Do some research on (Google/Bing) the items in the login window and start by removing all the ones that you are sure do not apply to you. If in doubt leave the program in until you know for sure.

jmf

Anyone having this issue happen to be using a 3rd party SSD or home-grown FusionDrive?

Also, how many devices/drives are you running externally?

FW800, USB, T-Bolt?

Thanks,

Larry

I have two external drives hooked to Apple Extreme 4th generation.

jmf

I have stopped the crashes by removing some unused "login items," but the square dots still happen once in awhile. I noticed them today when I was usinng Chrome, and they were gone when I closed it and opened another browser so they CHROME is suspect of errant kerning extensions. I'm using Version 32.0.1671.3 dev.

jmf

I really thought Mavericks would have licked this, and although things went well after installing yesterday, the video blotches are back again this morning!

At this point I think the only solution is a clean install. That's hoping that it is a non-apple kext doing this. If it is, then the only answer is reverting back to 10.6 or 10.7. 😟 As it is I'm going to have to find the time and an external hard drive to try a clean install and rebuild my computer from scratch.

Same here. No recent crashes until I started to install 10.9 (really bumpy process). This morning I had to do a hard shut down (the screen was frozen with nothing but square stars). All these crashes during new OSX and program updates makes me nervous. On startup I purged the PRam and repaired permission with 10.9 Disk Utility, so we will see what happens today.

jmf

Could this be a challenge with a service or app using an incorrect implimentation of OpenCL?

I too plan a fresh install this weekend.

I have bad news however, I have been "fresh-installing" each Mav beta and the issue still reappears after a few days.

I plan to avoid these technologies:

Adobe

Chrome

3rd party anti-virus?

iStat menus?

Others?

I suspect all browsers at this point. After rebooting, the system crashed while using Safari this morning. At least with Mountain Lion I was only dealing with square dots after I removed some login items. Now it crashes daily no matter what I try to do.

Is there anyone here who is talking to applecare support? If so please hold their heat to the fire and keep us advised.Thank you

jmf

I'm performing a clean install tonight, keeping the base system and no broswer plugins. Usually when I do this the artifacts appear by Tue/Wed after a few days of normal use.

If they present themselves again, I'll be taking it to my Apple Service Provider, they will reach out to AppleCare on my behalf. I will let you know if it comes to that and include updates.

Thanks,

Haymoose

Tonight the iMac was out of control. It was like the northern lights over Canada. Large triangle flashes, whole screen splashes of green and constant crashes when I tried to open a browser. I booted from the Rescue disk (holding down Option on startup), and repaired the disk and rebuilt permissions. So far so good. Let me know what you get with the clean install.

jmf

Jack,

I just finished my clean install of Mavericks. I avoided those App/plugins I suspect might be the reason for my issues. The counter started today at 4PM. I'll post an update the minute I see the little grids and dots show up again since this fresh install.

HayMoose