Q: Display artifacts in Mavericks

I just unboxed a newly bought MBP retina 13" (non haswell) yesterday and did OS update to Mavericks. Randomly, when the display had woken up from sleep, it suddenly gave artifacts like this. Is this a sign of hardware or OS issue?

macbook pro 17. 2.4ghz i5 from 2010, same issues for me after installing mavericks

Same here MBP Mid 2010 15 inch. 2.3Ghz i5

Indeed I too see it. Initially on the first two days after upgrade. I did an SMC reset and it cleared up. But plugging an external HDMI screen for the first time yesterday, it happened again.

late 2012 13" MBP retina.

This is one scary problem.

It only happens for me if the display has been allowed to go into sleep mode.

My 2008 Mac Pro with Cinema HD of same era is fine after installing Mavericks until the display goes to sleep. After reviving it I see shadows, blanks, black boxes, my desktop image shadowed over icons, images don't appear in Preview, Photoshop or anything else, and my screen slowly breaks up with icons disappearing and worse. I had to pull the plug out at one point as the apple menu bar disappeared totally. If I was still using Windows I'd be convinced I had a nasty virus!

But the solution above (system preferences > energy saver > check uncheck "automatic graphics switching") isn't working for me as that option doesn't appear in my energy saver window at all (I have only : put hard disks to sleep when possible, wake for Ethernet network access and start up automatically after a power failure).

So my only workaround is to stop my Mac from putting the display to sleep (ie preventing any energy saving sleep for the display) So I have both "computer sleep" and "display sleep" set to the maximum - "never"

Not ideal.

Thanks all for the discussion and help.

Got help from apple to resolve this problem. It seems to be solved now after a PRAM restart. Instructions here: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379?viewlocale=en_US.

CherryTomato's entry seems to have fixed my display artifacts. Reset the PRAM (NVRAM) and I haven't seen any artifacts for two days and Logic X (got my fingers crossed) has been running stably where before it was crashing a few times an hour. Thank you!

I have Late 2011 MacBook Pro i7.

Graphics  Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB

This is what I get after the update to maverick. Thanks apple you did a good job testing your OS.

I spoke too soon. The artifacts came back a day after resetting the PRAM.

Having the same issue with a MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010). Will try to post a screenshot when it happens again. Has anyone had any success in resolving this issue?

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Feedback

I've had that exact same problem on my Macbook Pro Retina 13" , late 2012.

I'm glad I'm not the only one, I've recently just had it at the "genius bar" because the display is faulty and they ran a full check on the machine and it came back 100% ok .. clearly a Mavericks problem as I never had it on Mountain Lion.

Thanks!

mid year 2010 15" MBP.  I had terrible artifacting, kernal panics, corrupt backups etc.  You name it it happened to me.  They replaced the machine in late 2010 and continued to happen only to have it resolved in Feb 2011 when the uninstalled and reinstalled Safari.  Go figure..

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago.  I've been problem free ever until I upgraded to Maverick.  Now the artifacting won't stop.  I've been to the genius bar multiple times in the past 2 weeks.  They've replaced my hard drive, my logic board and my RAM (twice).  It's still happening.  They're convinced its software based but can't figure out why (or replicate the problem when I'm in the store).  And yet it still continues.  I like the idea of the automatic graphic switching (and I vaguely remember that being discussed back in 2010).  That would explain why the problems comes and goes and it moves around.  It will be on the left and 5 minutes later the left will be fine but the right side is a mess.  It's maddening...

I have a 17-inch MacBook Pro (mid 2010, 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7) and have been experiencing the same issues.

I have done several PRAM resets, which seem to work for a day or two. 

I just tried unchecking the automatic graphics switching option in the energy saver control panel and the artifacts disappeared -- actually, they disappeared on the right side of the screen and when I moved a Safari window around on the left side the artifacts then disappeared on that side of the screen.  I did not reenable the switching option.

I have late 2011 MacBook Pro and I have been having these issues and more. While I get the artifacts, more typically, my screen just goes to vertical bars depending on the color of my background.

This happens all the time now, sometimes 10 times a day, Ive lost so much productivity because of it.

When I run Disk Permissions Repair, it always corrects the GPUCrashReporter. Running Disk Permissions Repair allows the system to stablize.

I did notice today though, that my machine was running okay and then I plugged in my Thunderbolt display and it locked up. So, Im seeing if I can go a whole day w/o having issues if Im not plugged into Thunderbolt.

I have not zapped PRAM yet. I will try that if things continue to stay the same.

I've heard that the pre-release of 10.9.1 which is suppose to address these issues isn't resolving them. So, I am not hopeful at this point.

I have previously tried unchecking the automatic graphics switcher, but I found my system to be more stable if it was enabled and I avoided launching Minecraft which used the better GPU, as it almost always caused the system to crash with virtical lines.

I've maybe used Rescue Mode on a Mac 2 times since they deployed it in earlier OS version, but I've used it what seems like a billion times, because thats the only way I can get it to come back up with Permission Repair.