I get that it's a "computer" like a PC. What I meant by no basis to troubleshoot is the vast differences in the way the OS handles hardware between Windows and OS X.
So far I have come to the conclusion that this is a heat-related problem. I installed smcFanControl and have the fans running...
I have about a 1.5 year old MacBook Pro (15" 2.33 GHz Intel Core2Duo). A few days ago, I was playing a video in Quicktime and the video card/driver went nuts. Ever since I've had little checkerboxes on the screen intermittently. See attached photo. I'm a PC guy till recently. Ive seen things...