Weird garbled black square logo on startup

Anybody seen this before - a black box of multi-colored garbled pixels where the apple logo should be on startup? I came across this because my external hard drives wouldn't mount or would mount and then give me the beach ball of death when I tried to open them. I went through disk utility's and repaired all disk permissions on ALL drives, and then I reset PRAM. Anything else I should do? I have a picture of the screen btw if anyone is interested - I wish we could post pics of problems here!
17" mac powerbook, 10.4.11

You'll need the Tiger disc, which if you upgraded using a retail version will be black in color.
[Only use Mac OS X 10.4-compatible disk utilities with Mac OS X 10.4 volumes|http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2648?viewlocale=en_US]:
"You can use Disk Utility in Mac OS X 10.3.9—and only Mac OS X 10.3.9—to check or repair a Mac OS X 10.4 volume (Disk Utility version 10.4.4 v145.7). Don't use an earlier version of Disk Utility, such as when started from a Mac OS X 10.3.0 disc."
I would suggest trying to start up from your hardware test disk and running that if it will run.

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Mbp black square next to apple logo on desktop

I bought my mbp in may and since then the hardrive has started to rattle, the batterys life quickly disolved to lasting on 20mins between full charges and has now fully stopped and has to be plugged in to the mains to work. I will take it back to apple when i get back from my travels to get these problems fixed.
The other day a small black square appeared next to the apple logo at the top left of the desktop. I restarted the computer and is disappeared. Tried to google "black sqaure" but nothing relivent came up. Does anyone know what that might have ment.
Would like to get all the faults fixed in one hit.
Hopefully the next one lasts much longer, i must have got a friday afternoon special, not quite what i expected from a £1000 laptop.
Thanks

If the little black square had a "P" inside of it I would say you installed PopChar. If not have you installed any other utilities that want to add a indicator in the menu bar? What happens if you point at the square and click (and maybe hold down) the mouse?
As for the physical problems, you are still under warrantee, so I recommend you have apple look at and fix them.

Printing the PO - Logo comes out as a black square

Hi!
When we are printing our smartform from SRM the logo does not turn out well. It is just a black square. When we are printing a smartform from ECC with the same logo it turns out well. The settings for the printers are the same in both ECC and SRM.
What could be the problem?
Sincerely
Anders Öhrling

Hi!
We are in SRM Server 550 and it look like the note is for 500. We are not having any problems with the print preview. It is only when we actually print the smartform that the logo turns into a black square. We have also tried using a black and white logo with no result.
Sincerely
Anders

Weird behaviour - logged in twice? black squares around focused objects?

Someone else was using my laptop yesterday at work and now I'm getting some odd behaviour. Functionally, everything seems to be okay, but there is a solid black square around GUI interface objects that I focus on in the OS. And clicking on the apple menu lists two instances of Log Out username, Restart, and Shut Down.
I tried repairing permissions and keychain access but I don't even know what to attribute this behaviour to.
Any help would be much appreciated..
Thanks in advance,
Matt

Matt
Welcome to Apple Discussions!!
Go to System Preferences > Universal Access and check the "VoiceOver" and other settings. You may need to set everything back to default to get rid of the black square.
Not sure about the doubled menu items …

Black Square on Boot Screen after last update

Hi everybody, I made the last security update of OSX on May 25th, (osx 10.9.3), and iTunes 11.2.2 on June 10th.
I do not use to reboot so much the computer, but I do that every 10 or 20 days. After one of those updates, I got these screen while booting up the computer:
As you can see, there is a black square, with the cursor over it. I can move the cursor and the computer seems to start without problems (actually faster) but showing that square. The other difference is also that now I cannot see the usual spinner under the apple logo.
I do not have any kind of boot camp or other OS installed. I have only changed the HD for an SSD one, but this was at november of last year, and everything has worked without problems until this date.
If anybody can give an idea on how to solve it, or if I am the only one who is havving this issue, please, post it here.
Thank you very much

So here it is:
EtreCheck version: 1.9.11 (43) - report generated 15 de junio de 2014 20:31:23 GMT+2
Hardware Information:
          MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011)
          MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,1
          1 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU: 2 cores
          4 GB RAM
Video Information:
          Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 384 MB
System Software:
          OS X 10.9.3 (13D65) - Uptime: 0 days 1:27:21
Disk Information:
          KINGSTON SH103S3120G disk0 : (120,03 GB)
                    EFI (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209,7 MB
                    MacintoshHD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 119,17 GB (19,14 GB free)
                    Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
          MATSHITADVD-R   UJ-8A8
USB Information:
          Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
          Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)
          Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad
          Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub
                    Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
Thunderbolt Information:
          Apple Inc. thunderbolt_bus
Configuration files:
          /etc/hosts - Count: 20
Gatekeeper:
          Anywhere
Kernel Extensions:
          [kext loaded] com.shapeservices.msm.driver.MSMFramebuffer (3.3.2 - SDK 10.6) Support
          [kext loaded] com.shapeservices.msm.driver.MSMVideoDevice (3.3.2 - SDK 10.6) Support
Startup Items:
          ChmodBPF: Path: /Library/StartupItems/ChmodBPF
          MySQLCOM: Path: /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM
Launch Daemons:
          [loaded] ag.shape.MSMToolHelper.plist Support
          [loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist Support
          [loaded] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist Support
          [loaded] com.google.keystone.daemon.plist Support
          [loaded] com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist Support
          [loaded] com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool.plist Support
          [loaded] com.oracle.java.JavaUpdateHelper.plist Support
          [loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.privileged_startx.plist Support
Launch Agents:
          [not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist Support
          [loaded] com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager.plist Support
          [loaded] com.google.keystone.agent.plist Support
          [loaded] com.oracle.java.Java-Updater.plist Support
          [loaded] org.macosforge.xquartz.startx.plist Support
User Login Items:
          iTunesHelper
          TimingHelper
          SpeechSynthesisServer
Internet Plug-ins:
          FlashPlayer-10.6: Version: 12.0.0.44 - SDK 10.6 Support
          QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.3
          Flash Player: Version: 12.0.0.44 - SDK 10.6 Outdated! Update
          Default Browser: Version: 537 - SDK 10.9
          o1dbrowserplugin: Version: 5.4.2.18903 Support
          SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.0.0 Support
          googletalkbrowserplugin: Version: 5.4.2.18903 Support
          Silverlight: Version: 5.1.20913.0 - SDK 10.6 Support
          Unity Web Player: Version: UnityPlayer version 4.3.5f1 - SDK 10.6 Support
          JavaAppletPlugin: Version: Java 7 Update 55 Check version
Safari Extensions:
          AdBlock: Version: 2.7.1
          BugMeNot: Version: 1.2
Audio Plug-ins:
          BluetoothAudioPlugIn: Version: 1.0 - SDK 10.9
          AirPlay: Version: 2.0 - SDK 10.9
          AppleAVBAudio: Version: 203.2 - SDK 10.9
          iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.3 - SDK 10.9
iTunes Plug-ins:
          CoverVersion: Version: 2.1.6 - SDK 10.8 Support
          Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.9
3rd Party Preference Panes:
          Flash Player Support
          Growl Support
          Java Support
Time Machine:
          Time Machine not configured!
Top Processes by CPU:
               3%          WindowServer
               3%          eclipse
               2%          Mail
               1%          loginwindow
               0%          fontd
Top Processes by Memory:
          553 MB          eclipse
          172 MB          Safari
          100 MB          Mail
          82 MB          SourceTree
          74 MB          com.apple.quicklook.satellite
Virtual Memory Information:
          66 MB          Free RAM
          1.09 GB          Active RAM
          1.04 GB          Inactive RAM
          1020 MB          Wired RAM
          716 MB          Page-ins
          12 MB          Page-outs

Transfered video's from Casio Exilim appear as black squares in iPhoto 08

Video's appear as black squares within iPhoto instead of first frame. Nevertheless the black squares still have video logo and duration indication and after double click will open and play in Quicktime. However, this is quite inconvenient if you look for specific videos.
How to fix this?
(I used a Casio Exilim compact camera to shoot these videos)

Chrisjan:
Are you able to play the videos even though the thumbnail is black? You might try rebuilding the library as follows: launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys depressed and follow the instructions to rebuild the library. Select the first three options.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 08 libraries and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

Small black squares appear/disappear when I used the down key

Small black squares appear/disappear when I used the down key-particulary when on FB, but also at other times

No, there is no yellow star on any of the entries. Each entry has the site's (or company's) logo, as well as the name of the site and URL. There is nothing more in each entry.

How come everytime I view a pic from an email on my iPad, there's a black square instead of the pic?

Whenever I pull up an email, instead of displaying the pic, it displays a black square. How do I fix this?

I'm sure there are plenty of people that you knew what you meant but I just wasn't familiar with the terminology. I assumed thats what you meant but I wasn't sure. After I posted my son explained it to me as well.
I don't know that much about this issue but from what I've read in the past, I assumed that it normally indicates that the photos are being sent in an unrecognizable format which would be really hard to believe if it happens with every email that you have been receiving.
Do you have load remote images turned on in settings? Settings>Mail, Contacts, Calendars>Load Remote Images>On?
Have you tried emailing a photo to yourself and see what happens? if not - try sending an email to the iPad from you computer. Have you tried tapping and holding down on the photo to bring up the save or copy option to see what happens? Maybe save one of the photos and see if it opens in the photos app?
Have you tried resetting your iPad? Hold down on the sleep and home buttons at the same time for about 10-15 seconds until the Apple logo appears - ignore the re slider?

I just updated the ios 7 on my ipad and now i have this black square in the middle of the screen and i cant use my ipad anymore

after updating the is a black square on the screen of my ipad, why is that and whjat can i do to make that square dissapear?

Try to reset the device:
*Device reset*
Device Reset (won't affect settings/data/music/apps/etc)
1. Press and hold (& continue to hold) BOTH the Sleep/Wake button & the Home button.
2. Continue to hold BOTH (ignoring any other messages that may show) until you see the Apple logo on the screen.
3. Release BOTH buttons when you see the Apple logo and allow the device to boot normally.

IMac Black Squares, Transparent Menu

I was using Adobe CS5 when suddenly my iMac starts acting strange: the finder windows are black, or have black squares and red lines behind the icons, the menus are transparent.
But the computer Works fine in safe mode.
I erased HD and reinstalled Mountain Lion, everything was back to normal until I installed CS5 again, and it went back to the same issue.
Apple Customer care was awesome, but couldn't fix the issue, concluding it might be an Adobe broken drive.
I called Adobe, they do not have live support for CS5 and told me to post on Adobe forum. Before I do that, I was wondering if anyone had this issue w/o Adobe installed.

Hi Eric, Thanks for your reply, I ran the program in safe mode and below is the output. Hoping I did not leave in any personal info (I erased the HD#, not sure if that matters).
Hardware Information:
          iMac (27-inch, Late 2009)
          iMac - model: iMac10,1
          1 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU: 2 cores
          8 GB RAM
Video Information:
          ATI Radeon HD 4850 - VRAM: 512 MB
System Software:
          OS X 10.8.5 (12F45) - Uptime: 0 days 0:47:51
Disk Information:
          Hitachi HD (# - comment: I erased #) disk0 : (1 TB)
                    disk0s1 (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB
                    Macintosh HD (disk0s2) / [Startup]: 999.35 GB (981.93 GB free)
                    Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB
          OPTIARC DVD RW AD-5680H
USB Information:
          Apple Internal Memory Card Reader
          Apple Inc. BRCM2046 Hub
                    Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller
          Apple Inc. Built-in iSight
          Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver
FireWire Information:
Thunderbolt Information:
Launch Daemons:
          [System] com.adobe.SwitchBoard.plist 3rd-Party support link
Launch Agents:
          [System] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist 3rd-Party support link
          [System] com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist 3rd-Party support link
          [System] com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager.plist 3rd-Party support link
User Launch Agents:
          [not loaded] com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist 3rd-Party support link
User Login Items:
          None
Internet Plug-ins:
          QuickTime Plugin: Version: 7.7.1
          AdobeAAMDetect: Version: AdobeAAMDetect 2.0.0.0 - SDK 10.7 3rd-Party support link
          JavaAppletPlugin: Version: 14.9.0 - SDK 10.7 Outdated! Update
Audio Plug-ins:
          AirPlay: Version: 1.7 - SDK 10.8
          iSightAudio: Version: 7.7.1 - SDK 10.8
iTunes Plug-ins:
          Quartz Composer Visualizer: Version: 1.4 - SDK 10.8
3rd Party Preference Panes:
          None
Old Applications:
          None
Time Machine:
          Time Machine not configured!
Top Processes by CPU:
               1%          EtreCheck
               1%          WindowServer
               0%          Adobe Photoshop CS5
               0%          fontd
               0%          WebProcess
Top Processes by Memory:
          246 MB          WebProcess
          238 MB          Adobe Photoshop CS5
          180 MB          Safari
          115 MB          WindowServer
          98 MB          Finder
Virtual Memory Information:
          895 MB          Free RAM
          1.52 GB          Active RAM
          323 MB          Inactive RAM
          5.29 GB          Wired RAM
          274 MB          Page-ins
          0 B          Page-outs

Small black squares

I installed mountain lion. When I turn on my computer now I have small black squares that appear on a white screen during startup. They do dissappear and computer still works fine. Is this normal with mountain lion?

Please read this whole message before doing anything.
This procedure is a diagnostic test. It won’t solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
Third-party system modifications are a common cause of usability problems. By a “system modification,” I mean software that affects the operation of other software — potentially for the worse. The following procedure will help identify which such modifications you've installed. Don’t be alarmed by the complexity of these instructions — they’re easy to carry out and won’t change anything on your Mac.
These steps are to be taken while booted in “normal” mode, not in safe mode. If you’re now running in safe mode, reboot as usual before continuing.
Below are instructions to enter some UNIX shell commands. The commands are harmless, but they must be entered exactly as given in order to work. If you have doubts about the safety of the procedure suggested here, search this site for other discussions in which it’s been followed without any report of ill effects.
Some of the commands will line-wrap or scroll in your browser, but each one is really just a single line, all of which must be selected. You can accomplish this easily by triple-clicking anywhere in the line. The whole line will highlight, and you can then either copy or drag it. The headings “Step 1” and so on are not part of the commands.
Note: If you have more than one user account, Step 2 must be taken as an administrator. Ordinarily that would be the user created automatically when you booted the system for the first time. The other steps should be taken as the user who has the problem, if different. Most personal Macs have only one user, and in that case this paragraph doesn’t apply.
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
When you launch Terminal, a text window will open with a line already in it, ending either in a dollar sign (“$”) or a percent sign (“%”). If you get the percent sign, enter “sh” and press return. You should then get a new line ending in a dollar sign.
Step 1
Copy or drag — do not type — the line below into the Terminal window, then press return:
kextstat -kl | awk '!/com\.apple/{printf "%s %s\n", $6, $7}'
Post the lines of output (if any) that appear below what you just entered (the text, please, not a screenshot.) You can omit the final line ending in “$”.
Step 2
Repeat with this line:
sudo launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.(apple|openssh|vix)|edu\.mit|org\.(amavis|apache|cups|isc|ntp|postfix|x)/{print $3}'
This time, you'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up. You don't need to post the warning.
Note: If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before taking this step. If that’s not possible, skip to the next step.
Step 3
launchctl list | sed 1d | awk '!/0x|com\.apple|edu\.mit|org\.(x|openbsd)/{print $3}'
Step 4
ls -1A /e*/mach* {,/}L*/{Ad,Compon,Ex,Fram,In,Keyb,La,Mail/Bu,P*P,Priv,Qu,Scripti,Servi,Spo,Sta}* L*/Fonts 2> /dev/null
Important: If you formerly synchronized with a MobileMe account, your me.com email address may appear in the output of the above command. If so, anonymize it before posting.
Step 5
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to get name of every login item' 2> /dev/null
Remember, steps 1-5 are all drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste, whichever you prefer — no typing, except your password. Also remember to post the output.
You can then quit Terminal.

I have a white screen with a black apple logo. I cant turn phone off or on. I cant reboot it by holding both buttons and it wont connect to my computer. What do i do?

I have a white screen with a black apple logo. I cant turn phone off or on. I cant reboot it by holding both buttons and it wont connect to my computer. What do i do?

Hi wiilson Cunha,
Oh man! That definitely sounds frustrating. Let’s see if we can troubleshoot this issue by following the steps in this resource:
If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch doesn't respond or doesn't turn on - Apple Support
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201412
If your device gets stuck during startup
When starting up, you might see the Apple logo or a red or blue screen for a long time, or your device might restart again. Try these steps:
Make sure that you have iTunes 12 or later on your computer.
Put your device in recovery mode.
When you get the option to restore or update, select Update. This will reinstall iOS without erasing your data.
Get more help
If you still need help after trying the steps above, contact Apple Support.
If the issue persists, follow the final link to contact us for additional assistance.
- Matt M.

Loading bar under Apple logo on startup

Hello,
So about a month or so ago, after i had installed and ran Lion since the day of release, my iMac version 11,3 my mac has started showing a grey progress bar underneath the apple logo during startup. When this loading bar appears, the mac then goes to the loading screen, but it seams that my graphics card is acting slow or weird somehow. After loging in, i have no sound whatsoever, or any network connection at all. Its like all the drivers have miraculously disappeared!
As i read somewhere that it could be something relating to a hard drive problem that, on startup, is trying to fix, i changed the HDD to a new SSD (didnt buy it just for that reason, was looking at getting one anyway)
This has not fixed the problem and i believe it could have something to do with a bug in lion, as for the entire time ive owned this mac, it has been fine. I believe this has happened to a couple of other people, but i hope detailed information can help solve it.
Thanks for reading. Hope you can help.

XplodeCreations wrote:
I am able to reinstall the os if it matters, just would not like to lose all of my data.
Does that mean that you choose to not keep a backup?
The loading bar is normal, once it was a little wheel, now it's a bar. Same thing.

HT201412 Iphone 4s is frozen on the black apple logo screen. have tried to hard power off but it will not turn on. Have connected to computer but device it is not recognizing the device so can't do an itunes update. any suggestions?

My phone is frozen and I can not get it to "Wake up"
Stuck on the black apple logo screen. And my computer and itunes are not responding when I plug it in.
Any ideas?

try doing a restart / reset first
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1430
if this doesn't work
You can try the step here in this link.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1808
when you're stuck on the apple logo, the operating iOS doesn't load so itunes could not detect the device

All of my photos are there in thumbnail, but when i click on to open a big black square appears with an exclemation mark in it!

Help, all my iphotos will not open, the thumbnails are there but when i click on them i get a black square with an exclemation mark in it?

What version of iPhoto? Is OS X 10.6.3 the correct version of your OS?
Have you cleaned up your computer using the finder to delete files recenbtly?
If you have not deleted the original photos in error then backup your iPhoto library, depress the option and command keys, launch iPhoto and rebuild your database
LN

Weird garbled black square logo on startup

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