Why are there glitches all over my icons in OSX?

January 24, 2006 6:22 AM

After using software update to get to OSX 10.4.4 and uninstalling some older helper apps and reinstalling one other app, I know have "glitches" all over every edge on my screen, and a 128 pix grey box follows my cursor around. Pic inside

I installed iGlasses [to make my iSight more customizable] months ago, and PithHelmet even earlier. The trial for iGlasses ran out and PithHelmet stopped working with an upgrade to Safari but i just clicked through the start warnings and times up dialogs. I had also had TransparentDock before the PREVIOUS update but that had stopped working at the same time PithHelmet did and I never got the new version.


After installing 10.4.4 last week, everything seemed fine. I decided I was gonna clean up a bit and did a spotlight search for everything iGlasses/PithHelmet related and trashed that. Then I installed TransparentDock. Everything was looking good although PithHelmet still popped up the warning so i obviously missed something. I went out and let my mac go to sleep.

When I got back, everything looked "fuzzy". There are glitches everywhere. On the edge of my icons on the desktop & dock. A square around my cursor. iSight video and QT video has it all over. Quicksilver's bezel has it too. It seems very much like a transparency issue in Quartz. Oh, also around the icons on the menubar. Here are some strange things I've found out about this:

1. Restarting in safe mode fixes it everywhere but the cursor.
2. If I have Photoshop full screen and activate QuickSilver, it does NOT have the glitches over the bezel.
3. It's on all user accounts

Since then I've tried: reinstalling iGlasses, uninstalling iGlasses. Using AppZapper on PithHelmet & iGlasses. Reverting to the backup dock. Restarting lots. Nothing.

Here's a picture of my desktop


I realize the answer will probably be "reinstall OSX" and that's the next thing I was going to try but I figured I'd ask here first. Also, since this is my first Mac and I've only had it since September, I don't really know HOW to reinstall and googling seems to only bring up out of date links. Am I going to lose everything on the drive, or just be replacing OS contents? Obviously, backing up all data is essential but is that just an incase or is it all going byebye?

Thanks guys.

P.S. EVERYTHING ELSE WORKS FINE.

posted by Brainy to computers & internet (11 comments total)

What kind of screen are you using; how is it connected?
Please can you go into the System Preferences>Displays to check what screenmode and refresh rate is being used?

Other more experienced Mac owners may be of more assistance (I too am on my first Mac...) but I'm sure that there are options to "rebuild your desktop" or "rebuild icons" or something... At work at the minute, so all this is off the top of my head...
posted by Chunder at 6:31 AM on January 24, 2006

The OS X equivalent of rebuilding your desktop (in terms of people recommending it as a panacea) is repairing permissions. Run the Disk Utility, select your boot volume, and the Repair Disk Permissions button.

If you've never done this before, you're almost certain to have a score or so comments flash by as the OS reinstitutes the permissions that it expects for various system files. If any of these involve, say, the video driver, it'd explain a large part of why this is happening. I'd try logging in in safe mode after doing this just to see if it fixes the cursor. If it does, but the other problems come back after going back to your usual user, I'd suspect the haxies.
posted by kimota at 6:49 AM on January 24, 2006

This thread recommends Tiger Cache Cleaner. It sounds to me like a good first step would be to clean out the icon and system caches. If problems continue beyond that, I would start to wonder about some video memory or system memory that is starting to fail -- I've seen similar video glitches on a failing video card.
posted by mikeh at 6:56 AM on January 24, 2006

There used to be a 'rebuild icons' strategy for OS X that involved deleting LSApplications, LSClaimedTypes, LSSchemes and their invisible backups out of ~/Library/Preferences, then logging out and back in, but I don't know what's happened to those files since Tiger. I suspect that, as Kindall recommended in a previous but not identical post, Tiger Cache Cleaner is a simpler way to go, but I don't know if it only blows out the associated icon caches or actually rebuilds the associations.
posted by kimota at 7:00 AM on January 24, 2006

Repair Disk Permissions is one of the magical incantations that everyone suggests, but rarely, if ever fixes anything other than obvious permissions problems...

It could be monitor frequency related--check that like the other guy says. Also change the color depth (thousands to millons or vice versa).

It could be Launch Services/Cache related--Onyx will delete caches and is free--try that too.

If those things don't do it then:

First thing to try for Troubleshooting mysterious problems like this on Mac OS X is to create a new user account (in System Preferences), log out and log into the new account. If the problem exists still, it's not specific to your user account. Chances are, that the new account will NOT have the problem.

Go back to your account, drag your preferences folder out of Library (onto the Desktop, or where ever). Log out, Log in--problem fixed? Bad preference--drag the first half of the old preferences back in the new preferences folder, log out & in--if the problem returns, it's a problem with one of those prefs...
posted by lrivers at 7:17 AM on January 24, 2006

One of the things contained in the 10.4.4 update is a video driver change. It sounds as though that didn't go smoothly, considering that those video artifacts look almost completely identical to Windows systems with broken video drivers. Re-download and re-run the 10.4.4 update before you try something so drastic as completely reinstalling the operating system. Repair permissions before you run the update, to help ensure the update runs correctly.

Apple's update installers have been known to be a bit funky. I've seen some rare cases where an update has to be installed two or three times before everything goes back to normal.
posted by majick at 7:26 AM on January 24, 2006

Ah, Some things I forgot to mention.

The glitches flicker, they aren't pixels, they're overtop of the pixels.

I HAVE repaired permissions.

I'm running a mini through the adapter to my Dell Trinitron AND the glitches DID get somewhat smoother as I adjusted the adapter. But as they didn't go away that seemed to be in addition to the actual glitches.

Im not at home so I can't try any of these but majick seems like he might be on the right track...and his solution involves the least work and the least feeling bad about playing with the system. I had considered it possibly a video card issue as well so it's good to see I'm not alone on that. Thanks for all the help!
posted by Brainy at 7:45 AM on January 24, 2006

I think majick is on the right track. This sort of screen corruption can also happen if something's wrong hardware-wise with the video card -- the GPU could be overheating due to a fan going out or dust accumulation, or the video RAM could be bad.
posted by zsazsa at 8:08 AM on January 24, 2006

Dell Trinitron AND the glitches DID get somewhat smoother as I adjusted the adapter

What do you mean by "adjusted the adapter"? What kind of adaptor is it? DVI to VGA?
posted by doctor_negative at 8:25 AM on January 24, 2006

Yes it's a DVI to VGA adapter. By adjusting I meant tightening.

On the overheating angle, I have my router on top of the mini. It is quite light and the mini seems to have a stable roof and I assumed that since it wasn't bending the top of the mini in as far as I could tell it probably wasn't the culprit. I did try moving it but nothing changed, although I did put it back rather quickly.
posted by Brainy at 8:40 AM on January 24, 2006

I don't know if it only blows out the associated icon caches or actually rebuilds the associations.

It blows out the icon caches and associations and then the Finder rebuilds them as it goes along.
posted by kindall at 9:12 AM on January 24, 2006