Getting distortion/pixelation/weird colors in Lion interface

I just got a certified refurb 27 inch iMac (running Lion) through Apple, and for the most part I love the machine.  However, in the last few days, I've noticed some weird glitches in the user interface.  Dock icons, desktop icons, finder windows, and toolbar text will randomly become distorted and pixelated, often with a bright green color dominating the distorted appearance.  I've run permissions repair, disk check, rebooted, etc.  Rebooting fixes the problem temporarily, but at some point after being on for a while the problems will return.  I'm wondering if anyone else has had this problem and knows what could be causing it.

Is it also comes up while booting in Recovery Mode (hold down ALT at startup and choose the Recovery partition for bootup).
If it also appears there i would guess it's and hardware error. So bring it to an authorized Apple Service provider.

Similar Messages

  • Display of my Macbook Pro gets distorted/pixelated out of nowhere! Help!

    I don't know what's wrong with my laptop, the display suddenly turns all pixalated in different colors, making it impossible to read anything! And it happens when I'm browsing the web, not even watching videos. The only way to fix it is by restarting the computer with the power button. This has happened about 3 times already.

    Try a PRAM reset: power off the MBP, press the power button and before the start up chime press and hold option, command, the keys P, R. Hold till it chimes twice and release the kys and see if that helps.
    You can also try a SMC (system managment reset):
    Power off the MBP, power it up and before it chimes press and hold left side shift, control, opton, hold these keys till the gear stops spinning.
    If these don't work you might want to go the Apple store for some help.

  • Whenever I try to adjust the color of a scene it gets distorted/squiggly lines.

    Using elements 12; This is my first time editing by the way. Whenever I try to adjust the color of a scene the footage gets distorted/squiggly lines. This is prior to me rendering the footage -- I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

    mrdemiraj81
    Thanks for the reply.
    General
    Are you saying that scenes with and without color correction had those quiggly look?
    Are you aware of the More button at the bottom right of the Lighting Panel expanded? When you click on that, you should have opportunities
    to adjust your settings. Right now you are looking at the More view. Note the Less bottom at the bottom right of the Lighting Panel expanded. You would click on Less to get back to the original view which does not have the adjustments sliders included.
    More Specifics
    Definitely start with the look at unrendered (orange line over content) versus rendered (green line over content).
    Once that is ruled out then we can explore alternative explanation for what you are observing.
    If unrendered/rendered is not the answer, could you post a screenshot of one of scenes with the "distorted/squiggly lines"
    But, if you cannot, written Q&A will have to do.
    1. Can you get the properties of this 4 min promo video - video compression, audio compression, frame rate, interlaced or progressive, file extension, pixel aspect ratio. If you do not have this information, it can be obtained from the MediaInfo (Tree View) program.
    http://mediainfo-mac.en.softonic.com/mac
    Just be careful for unwanted carry alongs during the download and install of MediaInfo. In the MediaInfo (Tree View), please look for what are listed for Scan Type and Scan Order.
    2. Also, please tell us what you see listed in the opened project under
    Edit Menu/Project Settings/General and the readings for Editing Mode, Timebase, Frame Size, and Pixel Aspect Ratio (even if the fields look grayed out).
    Let us start here. If there is anything that you need clarification on, please do not hesitate to ask. I will rewrite if necessary.
    Thanks.
    ATR

  • My Mac Book Pro suddenly gets stuck with weird horizontal colored lines across the screen, which will only go once I restart the laptop. What can I do?

    Randomly while scrolling, the screen just goes beserk and gets stuck with random colored lines. And, the only way to get rid of this is to restart my entire computer. My laptop is about 3 years old now. Is this a sign of age or what? What can I do to run my laptop smoothly without turning it off and on every time it goes crazy?

    Try resetting PRAM and SMC.
    Reset PRAM.  http://support.apple.com/kb/PH4405   x
    Reset SMC.     http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
    Choose the appropriate method.
    "Resetting SMC on portables with a battery you should not remove on your own".

  • Why am I getting distortion from my audio interface while using Logic 9 on my new iMac with Maverick?

    I have been recording using a line 6 UX2 interface and also, a Focusrite iTrack Solo interface, successfully with Logic 9 on my 2007 MBP for a few years now.  I recently bought a new iMac and migrated my time machinre back up to the iMac.  Since then I have had to maunually replace missing sound and room evironment files, and now I cannot get a clean mic recording using either interface or either of my two mics.
    Any suggestions?
    Perplexed in NYC

    I assume you have an iMac with a fusion drive? If so, contact Apple. Audio dropouts on these machines even occur in iTunes.

  • Monitor gets with weird color

    Hi,
    It just happened, I was working with Final Cut, I left the laptop while it was exporting a file to convert into a QT . Later I went to the computer and the monitor had a weird color something like decolored (instead of gray it was violet).
    Does anybody has an idea about it?

    Could be video chipset issues due to overheating, especially since it went away after a short rest. When working with a CPU-intensive program like FCP, you should make sure the case bottom and the exhaust vent under the hinge on the back edge are unobstructed. They are critical to good cooling. If you use the PB with an external monitor with the lid closed, that also runs up temps. You may wish to consider a laptop cooler to help move air across the case bottom.
    A Dashboard widget like this:
    http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/istatpro.html
    will let you monitor some temps on your PowerBook.

  • New iMac display problem(?) - weird colors and grain

    Hello,
    I'm a fresh mac user, made the switch this monday (August 27th) when my 24" iMac 2.4GHz C2D arrived. After using it for a while, I noticed a handful of dead pixels, and a semi-bright green stuck one. I thought I'd wait and see how disturbing I would find them before raising an issue about them.
    Well, yesterday I decided to make my first backup of the whole system to my external 500GB Lacie drive (connected with FW800) using Super Duper!, which to my understanding is a reasonably sturdy and reliable backup application.
    During the first backup iteration I started to notice some alterations in color in the top middle part of the display. I then returned to whatever I was doing (not on the mac, I had no other applications running, just Super Duper!), and after a while took another look at the display. The weird colored area had expanded, and the whole display had become somewhat grainy. Also, the backup process had slowed down quite a bit (from ~30MB/s to ~7-8MB/s).
    So I cancelled the backup operation and logged out and back in again. No change. Then I restarted the whole system, which booted just fine, with none of the aforementioned problems. Even the second backup iteration went without problems.
    Still, it's a new (and with my budget, quite expensive) computer, and if I get this kind of problem during the first week, I cannot continue using it happily in the fear of these problems reoccurring time and again.
    I took a couple of pictures of this, one during and one after the problem. The quality of these are quite lousy, they're taken with my Nokia 9500 Communicator.
    During the problem:
    http://iki.fi/aita/imac/01notok.jpg
    After rebooting:
    http://iki.fi/aita/imac/02_ok.jpg
    The images are taken in the same light conditions, but from slightly different viewing points. Note: The first image does not present reflections, it's how the screen looked (actually, in real life it looked somewhat worse)
    What do you think?
    Could this be a driver related issue or have I received bad hardware?
    My drivers and Apple software should be up to date (at least OS X informs me that everything is, and I haven't found newer graphics drivers anywhere).
    If anyone has had the same or related problems or know how I should proceed with this matter, I would be grateful.
    Thank you in advance!
    -Aidan from Finland

    A few people, myself included, have experienced the same thing. Check these threads: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1082181&tstart=15
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1100912&tstart=30
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1090395&tstart=60
    So far the only fix suggested has been to call apple and get a replacement. I'm still.....still waiting for mine to make it slowly across the ocean from China, so I don't know how the new one is working. I'd call Apple and request a new one.

  • SWF Panel: how to get/set pixel or better - grab and paste BitmapData

    Hi everyone,
    trying to understand how to read and write pixel color from image or better - current layer but can't understand how to do this. Does this even possible? Main idea - it's pick current layer, put it to the SWF Panel. Doing there some modifications and back to Photoshop or write it by pixel. Doesn't matter.
    How know?
    I'm using Win7 x64, Photoshop CS6

    We don't have a direct way of getting the pixel data back and forth from a panel.
    You could try to get a socket connection via the Connections SDK and get pixel data that way. Not sure how much effort that would be. There is an AIR example in the connections SDK but I'm not certain if the socket interface will work inside of the SWF Panel.
    Telling Photoshop to write them out to disk and then read them into your panel would probably be pretty clunky.

  • Cover flow is distorted, pixelated, in itunes for Windows XP.

    I feel like a chode posting on Apple forum...PC's suck, but I'm too stubborn to change over. Anyway, I did a clean install on Windows XP w/ service pack 2 and also re-installed itunes 7. The album artwork is displayed in the lower left corner and also works in the "list view", but it gets distorted and pixelated in the "cover flow" view. I updated the latest directx and also performed the direct diagnostic tools for direct draw acceleration and direct 3d, but the "cover flow" view is still poorly shown. Again, PC's suck...anyone know fix? Thanks.

    I can't be of any help. But I do have the exact same problem on my Mac Pro. All the album art is there but Cover Flow itself is just not working. Not even after a clean install of Mac OS 10.6.1

  • Anchor points move and entire shape gets distorted from changing stroke thickness

    I have a fairly simple drawing that I drew at a larger size so I could be precise with it, and now I want to reduce it down to the finished size, and thicken the stroke, but when I make the stroke thicker, my anchor points move and the entire drawing gets distorted.
    In 24 years of using Adobe Illustrator, I've never seen this happen. When I click on the "up" arrow on the Stroke palette a bunch of times to incrementally increase the stroke thickness, I can watch the anchor points "walk" around as my shape gets distorted.
    If I instead enter a numerical value for the stroke thickness, this doesn't happen.
    However, if I use the Scale tool to shrink the drawing down to 10% or 20% size or whatever, with Scale Strokes and Effects UNCHECKED, again, the anchor points move and the drawing is distorted.
    This is all on a brand new installation of Illustrator CS 6 for Mac (though I've been using CS 6 for about 2 years now, my hardrive crashed this past weekend and I had to reinstall everything).
    Did I miss a little checkbox somewhere that I've never seen before that's making this happen?
    Editing this post to add:
    Also, some of the objects in my drawing will not allow me to change the stroke to less than 1 point thickness. If I choose .5 or .25 pt from the pop-up menu, or even if I enter the numerical value, it jumps back to 1 point. Other objects in the drawing do not.
    These objects in question are "rounded rectangle" shapes that I've used the scissor tool on to cut and then used the "join" command to put them together with parts of other shapes that were "scissored' as well.
    All of the "Ellipse" and "Rounded Rectangle" shapes that I left intact do not exhibit this problem with stroke and distortion.

    You are being bitten by the Align-to-Pixel-Grid. Select everything and go to the Transform panel and turn off Align-to-Pixel-Grid at the bottom of the panel; then go to the panel flyout (small triangle, upper right) and turn off Align Objects to Pixel Grid.

  • The new nvidia drivers, weird color blending

    i tried all the nvidia drivers, but all what comes after the 53.3 have a weird color blending problem, and i can't fix it.
    the problem is visibale if u r looking to an image with gradient color, u'll c it as if it's not correctly blended, and this goes weird when u work with photo editing and retouching an image, u'll think that ur work is bad.
    i got to fix the prob, temporaly , by accessing the advanced tab of timing, if i just edit any number the colors go ok, once i press ok and apply, everything remain as the original, and the problem is here again.
    do u have anysuggestions plz, anyhelp will be much appreciated.

    man, what software are u talking about (did i mentioned any test software?)
    the problem i'm facing is the color blending in all drivers after 53.3 is not showing right, the gradient still showed degrade and not fully blended, as if u turn ur display to 24 bit, instead of 32bit, but actually the result i get is like the image is displayed at 28 bit  
    u can't know what i'm talking about , but if u try it by urself, just open an image in photoshop or any editing application, choose any image that have a gradient shown well, and c it, u'll notice that gradient is not fully smooth, it's kind of steped, and to b sure, fill a scratch background by the linear gradient tool (black, white) and c the disaster, there is no smooth intermediate grey section, u'll c steped.
    i hope it's clear dude.

  • Opening mov files - weird color patterns + freeze

    Hi,
    Suddenly when opening mov files, quicktime shows weird colors instead of a video. It also takes a long time to open, and quicktime then hangs. I don't know what I installed that could have caused the problem. I tried reinstalling but that doesn't help.
    I use vegas as video editor, and there I can still import quicktime movies without problems.
    It used to work before on my xp64pro!
    Any help would be greatly appreciated.
    wouter

    it might be worth checking to see if you can just get away with disabling Direct3D accleration on the PC. it's also probably worth checking your video drivers too.
    the following document has some nice pointers in those regards. (iTunes uses QuickTime for video playback, so the same basic troubleshooting techniques apply.)
    Troubleshooting iTunes for Windows video playback perfomance issues

  • Fix for bland Lion interface?

    Does anybody know how to bring a little visual life into the Lion interface?  It is sooooo bland that I sometimes think I'm running Windows
    I seriously wonder if anyone at Apple thought about contrast being a great help when moving among window elements.

    LOL  Kappy.  This is the closest I will ever get  to touching your greatness, myopic or not !
    I will relish in it while I can !
    cheers
    Ha, that post tipped the scale. My it is my lucky day!  cheers mate
    Message was edited by: leroydouglas

  • CS4 timeline gets distorted when moving items from bin to timeline

    Hello everyone.I'm using Premier pro cs4 with windows vista ultimate 32 bit. when trying to move files from the bin into the  timeline the display gets distorted and multiply the timelines. Any advice? 

    More information needed for someone to help
    http://forums.adobe.com/thread/416679
    Some specific information that is needed...
    Brand/Model Computer (or Brand/Model Motherboard if self-built)
    How much system memory you have installed, such as 2Gig or ???
    Operating System version, such as Win7 64bit Pro... or whatevevr
    -including your security settings, such as are YOU the Administrator
    -and have you tried to RIGHT click the program Icon and then select
    -the Run as Administrator option (for Windows, not sure about Mac)
    Your Firewall settings and brand of anti-virus are you running
    Brand/Model graphics card, sush as ATI "xxxx" or nVidia "xxxx"
    -or the brand/model graphics chip if on the motherboard
    -and the exact driver version for the above graphics card/chip
    -and how much video memory you have on your graphics card
    Brand/Model sound card, or sound "chip" name on Motherboard
    -and the exact driver version for the above sound card/chip
    Size(s) and configuration of your hard drive(s)... example below
    -and how much FREE space is available on each drive (in Windows
    -you RIGHT click the drive letter while using Windows Explorer
    -and then select the Properties option to see used/free space)
    Windows Indexing is BAD http://forums.adobe.com/thread/676303
    While in Properties, be sure you have drive indexing set OFF
    -for the drive, and for all directories, to improve performance
    Some/Much of the above are available by going to the Windows
    Control Panel and then the Hardware option (Win7 option name)
    OR Control Panel--System--Hardware Tab--Device Manager for WinXP
    And the EXACT type and size of file that is causing you problems
    -for pictures, that includes the camera used and the pixel dimensions
    Plus Video-Specific Information http://forums.adobe.com/thread/459220?tstart=0
    Read Bill Hunt on a file type as WRAPPER http://forums.adobe.com/thread/440037?tstart=0
    What is a CODEC... a Primer http://forums.adobe.com/thread/546811?tstart=0
    What CODEC is INSIDE that file? http://forums.adobe.com/thread/440037?tstart=0
    Report back with the codec details of your file, use the programs below
    For PC http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ or http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en
    For Mac http://mediainfo.massanti.com/
    Once you know exactly what it is you are editing, report back with that information... and your project setting, and if there is a red line above the video in the timeline, which indicates a mismatch between video and project

  • IMovie HD sound gets distorted

    I have a few teachers who have made iMovies using iMovieHD. When you play the movie in full screen mode after about 5 minutes the sound gets distorted. I thought that this was just an isolated incident and that the movie was corrupt, but now I have two teachers, two computers same issue.
    These are being done on MacBooks 10.5.6 with 1G RAM and they have not been converted to quicktime yet. Since iMovie HD is easier for my staff they use it rather than new '08 7.1.4.
    Is that the issue?

    Hi
    a. What kind of audio used ? .aiff, .mp3, from iTunes etc.
    b. Any external hard disk used ? Formatted as ? USB or FireWire ?
    else General troubleshooting list.
    *Not knowing the origin to Your problem - General approach when in trouble is as follows:*
    • Free space on internal (start-up) hard disk if it is less than 10Gb should rather have 25Gb
    • Hard disk is untidy: Repair Permissions, Repair Hard disk (Apple Disc Util tool)
    • Garageband-fix. Start it and Close it. Re-try
    • Delete iMovie pref file - or rather start a new user/account - log into this and re-try
    iMovie pref file resides:
    Mac Hard Disk (start-up HD)/Users/"Your account"/Library/Preferences and is named: com.apple.iMovie.plist
    While iMovie is NOT RUNNING - move this file out to desk-top.
    Now restart iMovie.
    • Third party plug-ins that doesn't work OK (not relevant for iMovie’08 or 09)
    • Program miss-match: iMovie 5.0.2, up to Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.4.1 - is OK
    • Program miss-match: iMovie 6.0.3 or 6.0.4, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.4.1 - is OK (might work under Leopard)
    • Program miss-match: iMovie’08 v. 7.0.1, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.4.1 - is OK (might work under Leopard)
    • Screen must be set to Million-colors
    From LKN 1935: (in this case = iMovie HD (5), I tried it all, but nothing worked.
    Your answer (above) has been helpfull insofar as all the different trials led to the conclusion that
    there was something wrong with my iMovie software. I therefore threw everything away and reinstalled
    iMovie from the HD. After that the exportation of DV videos (there has not been any problem with HDV videos)
    to my Sony camcorders worked properly as it did before.
    Yours Bengt W

Maybe you are looking for