Weeeeird Leopard graphics glitches on PPC-- is my Mac dying?

[Bluefusion]

Leopard has been giving me the weirdest graphical glitches in the past week and a half-- check it out. I'll be using the system and doing things just fine, and suddenly it looks like.... THIS:

At first I thought it was just iTunes 8 (and, indeed, it seems that it doesn't happen if iTunes 8 isn't running), but it looks as though it's taken over the system. I get misaligned Dock labels, the entire screen shifted +/- 10px to the right (check out the black edge) and a bunch of other absurdities. Usually the only way to resolve it is to restart. The OS works fine, it just looks like this...

Any idea what's going on? As evidenced by the fact that it can be captured in screenshots, this is an OS thing, not (necessarily) a hardware defect-- though my Powerbook is about 3 years old now and is definitely on its way out (1.5 GHz G4).

Has anyone else had this experience?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Now that is odd. Did you install the Leopard Graphics Update? It came out with 10.5.3, if my memory is correct. Also, have you updated to 10.5.5?

 

[Sweetfeld28]

i would say your graphics card is having issues. if you were using a desktop, i would tell you to reseat it, and see if you continue to have the issues. if you do, then it has to be a failing graphics card, or software glitch.

 

[smogsy]

gfx cards is on its last legs or very bad/corrupt drivers

 

[bigjnyc]

is it under warranty? take it in and have your graphics card replaced.

 

[applefan69]

Everyone saying its his graphics card

if that were the case, I dont think this would appear in screenshots

at least i dont think they would

 

[phinnaeus]

A long time ago I had a ****-ton of graphics glitches (that were fixed by replacing the graphics card), and I could take screenshots of them just fine.

 

[tkermit]

It kinda looks like corrupt video ram. Depending on how often this happens and if you have the time to do so, you might try downloading a linux live cd (if there is one for PPC - gentoo maybe ?) to see if it happens there, also.

 

[MacUser2525]

It kinda looks like corrupt video ram. Depending on how often this happens and if you have the time to do so, you might try downloading a linux live cd (if there is one for PPC - gentoo maybe ?) to see if it happens there, also.

Agreed on the corruption issue although if the OP has been letting it go to sleep with an ATI card then that will cause it sometimes. On my G4 dual machine I installed the ati-radeon-10-3-6-jan2005.dmg to get rid of it. Also Ubuntu used to have live CD for PPC as well you may need to dig around for it though it been awhile since I downloaded or you can always try a Debian install disk to see.

 

[tkermit]

Have you tried running "Apple Hardware Test" from the system disc ?

 

[iFanaddic]

looks normal to me...but im a pc owner!