Red and green square dots?

Add me to the list of frustrated iMac owners with the intermittant red and green square problem. It just showed up today on my 27" 2.8GHz Quad Core I5 (October 2010 vintage) running Mountain Lion. The problem is intermittant and goes away when a window opens or slides over the offending area of the screen.

The nearest Apple Store is 3.5 hours away, so "dropping in" to have the Genius Bar guys look at it is out of the question. This is FRUSTRATING!! I hope someone identifies a sure-fire way to identify the source of the problem. Better yet, I hope Apple comes forward with a solution!

I Fixed It Permanently!

Had the squares for months and then I uninstalled Google Chrome and Avast Antivirus and then I did a PRAM/SMC reset (Do a google search to learn how to do these). I have had no squares at all since November 13. I have thrown everything at my IMac since and still I have had absolutely no return of the squares. I am considering this problem finally fixed for my Mac.

Thanks, Crow8ster! Since this problem just started today, I think I'll monitor the situation for a few days before proceding. I am using Google Chrome and Trend Micro antivirus, so your situation is similar to mine. Thanks again for your prompt response!

Crow8ster, I am so glad you posted this!

Immediately after you posted, I uninstalled Google Chrome (using App Cleaner) and I have not seen any glitches yet. I've never had Avast on my computer.

THANK YOU!

I only had Safari and no anti viral software on my iMac but gosh I'm going to be so angry if all it needed was a PRAM/SMC reset. Also, the Apple store would owe me over $600 since they replaced my logic board and video card for no reason.

PRAM/SMC reset is one of the things I tried awhile ago and it wasn't a permanent fix. I do believe Google Chrome hastens the onset of the problem, but the solution involves fixing a manufacturer defect; and since Apple's creations are inherently proprietary the solution is an Apple decision of responsibility. That is, disclosing the solution concedes liability. You have to wonder, what would Steve Jobs do?

jmf

Today I noticed colored blocks while in OS X Recovery running Disk Utility. This would seem to rule out a third party software program as the cause/solution.

jmf

I have been searching for posts like these and find all these results quite interesting. I have similar video and freezing problems on a late 2006 iMac (2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) running OS 10.6.8.

It looks like the video doesn't refresh fast enough such as when minimizing a window, remnants of the window remain on the screen. My dock also occasionally goes bonkers, pixelating all the icons. And when scrolling through a document that's on the web, parts of the document disappear and reappear either at the same place or on top of other parts of the document. Facebook sometimes gets very interesting.

The only thing I haven't done is remove Chrome. However a MacBook from 2007 and running similar software works fine with Chrome.

So I'm not convinced its a software issue. TekServe and Apple all think its the video card. Since I have relatively old equipment I guess its time to buy a new computer. Sigh.

Also was having the same issues withe the squares and the freezes. I have a 21.5 mid-2011 with 8gb running Mavericks.

Forgive me if this "solution" has already been discussed, but I made a couple of changes to my Energy Saver preferences for an unrelated issue involving iTunes, and it seem to have fixed the graphics problem. In Energy Saver I unchecked "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" and then changed "Computer sleep" to never. Did this 5 days ago and not only did it fix my iTunes issue it seem to have fixed the graphics issue. Who knows.

A few weeks ago, in desparation, I did pretty much the opposite and it seem to help.

jmf

Today I installed the 10.9.1 update with high hopes.

jmf

Day 2 and still good. What a gift it would be to get my 2010 iMac for Christmas.

jmf

Apple said they replaced my logic board and video card again as well as reformated the hard drive with a fresh install of mavericks. I've had it back for a week and haven't had the issue. Knock on wood it is fixed.

Sorry Jack, a day after I installed the 10.9.1 update, the red splotches were back. 😟

I don't think we will see this fixed unless apple releases a specific driver update (or rollback) for our video cards, and they don't care about older machines to do it.

I really wish we could figure out a way to replace the driver with the old manually.

During my update there was something different. There was a warning that I would need to restart and a small bland update symbol on a screen with no background that I normally do not see during the OS update process, It reminded me of firmware installs.

On about the same time I also updated CHROME to Version 33.0.1750.5 dev. Still no problems.

No problems yet so I am still hopeful.

jmf