Red and green square dots?

Haymoose, if it works please be sure to let us know what apps etc you made sure not to install.

Still not clear if this is a 3rd party kernal extention interfering with the video driver, or if it is an updated bad video driver itself...which means this may have come in a system update a while ago and will be there unless you re-install 10.7 or 10.8 and don't run updates (and maybe a slim chance we can dig the old driver up and force replace it).

It is tough to troubleshoot because it usually is not there after a reboot but starts to show up after hours or days. It is most apparent in web graphics, I think that are using video accelleration effects for shading etc. Just very annoying seeing pixels and graphics all over my monitor which flash with typing or disk access or other motion. Thankfully my actual hard crashes have been minimal.

I'll include an image of what I'm seeing right now as an example.

Wow Josh, you have a far worse issue then me.

After a fresh new clean install of Mavericks, I am still seeing the issue. No Chrome, No Flash. No AntiVirus.

Screenshot:

I opened Activity monitor and took a screenshot about a minte later and noticed this service still running and locked up: "QTKitServer-(29000) Safari" however I feel it might be unrelated.

I am seeing those squared now in my browser window but the service is not vaprolocked at this moment.

I'll be taking it in next week, Mon/Tues. I do still have AppleCare and I'll keep you posted.

HayMoose

Moose, most of the time I see exactly what you have, small red or green or magenta blotches.

Once in a while though it gets very bad and several graphic elements in safari only get random noise like that.

They clearly toggle their state with hard drive access or mouse/keybopard traffic. Another thought I had was the menumeters etc usage graphs that we both have in our menubars which also monitor drive usage etc. I see you have them too.

Lucky you have applecare. Mine is an '11 refurb so no luck for me. I just wish we could narrow down exactly what is causing this, but it sure seems like a low level software change.

I wonder if @JackFox is running iStat?

Josh, I will remove it from both my machines today and see the impact over the weekend.

Oh, and to top it off, it's presenting itself om my early 2011 (AMD Radeon HD 6770M) MBP 8,3 now too. 😟

I'll continue to keep you guys posted.

HayMoose

No iState here. I do have Contact Sync (Google Contacts), Skydrive, ScanSnap Manager and Microsoft Database Daemon running.

jmf

I found a way to temporarily get rid of them. If I click my mouse anywhere near the red dots, and then drag the mouse so that it creates a blue box over the red square dots, they will dissapear. Anyone else getting this same response? This is still quite a nuisance that must get some attention from Apple.

I was about to change my cursor size back to normal, but I thought I would ask first if anyone here has enabled any Accessibility options?

jmf

I have been having this problem for 6 months. After installing Mavericks it has turned vicious. Anytime my mac sleeps for several minutes I have trouble waking it. Bad news is the little squares grow into big ones like this. Not sure why this pic has flipped. This is a total crash. I am now having the type of frequent crashing I used to have in the era of os9. ?????

I am using the Early 2011 Macbook Pro

2GHz i7

8gb 1333Mhz DDr3

AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256MB

You’re not alone Benjamin102. I have a 27” iMac with 2Tb drive. Today I removed Checkmate diagnostics and Numi calculator, both resident apps. I haven't seen any dots or crashes that were increasing with use.

jmf

In our process of throwing things against the wall to see what sticks, when I run DiskWarrior it always comes up with red letter problems.warnings and soon after the repair there is a period of crashes (every time).

jmf

I removed 80gb of data. The pixel invasion has receeded. I am now able to allow my computer to go to sleep without fear of a pixel takeover and crash. However the problem persists. I notice a few green and red single pixels. So I fear that if my hard gets full with data the problem will be back with vengence.

I havent run Diskwarrior. I have used disk utlities several times it always gives my computer a clean bill of health.

I dont think the aggressive pixel behavour I experenced earlier this week is directly related to Mavericks, but rather things got worse because the installation of Mavericks took up lots of HD space. I am now convinced that the problem will become more acute as HD space gets used up. Things were at thier worse I only had 25bg of free disk space and as each crash generated data things began to feedback and spiral out of control.

I do not have a SSD. I am guess that none of you guys have one either? I also run Dropbox. What about you guys?

I only have 3 login items:

SmartDaemon (Disabled)

ItunesHelper (Disabled)

Dropbox (Enabled)

BTW I set up a new user, it made no difference.

Have things been getting worse for you guys lately?

While I have been plagued with video corruptions the last few months, the hard crashes were only about once per week. But in this past week, my imac has been crashing twice a day! Now this is really crossing a line. This has been a perfectly good machine, and some software update has caused it to become junk, and even a fresh install won't remedy it. I couldn't even sell it without reverting back to something old like 10.6.

Are you implementing the suggestions in this thread? I was in the same position as you but after removing all running programs (resident and login items) that I do not need or only used occasionally, I have eliminated the crashes. This is a broad net but until the source of the problem is found it is better than junking the iMac. When you are removing programs I recommend using a software tool like AppCleaner to be sure suspected problem routines are removed.

jmf