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island

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 19, 2007
481
2
Nashville
I picked up a new MacBook yesterday and I noticed a weird issue when coming out of "monitor sleep" mode, not regular sleep mode.

When I move the mouse, the external monitor shows what you see in the picture, kinda like a TV with no signal. The MacBook screen works fine so what I just do is unplug and re-plug in the DVI plug and everything is good again.

My 24 inch Dell monitor worked fine with my M1330 and other computers so I know it's not that. Does anyone have the same issue or maybe give me some light on this?

Thanks in advance.
 

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Tummy

macrumors regular
Feb 1, 2008
165
91
I have mine connected to a 24" samsung and it goes blank (loses signal) briefly at random every 5-30 minutes.
 

ltrpmac2

macrumors newbie
Oct 22, 2008
4
0
I've got the same problem too.

I contacted apple. The problem did not exist in their database so the representative contacted a "technical specialist".

Their advice was to make a new user account and see if the problem still persisted (I really don't think that will make a difference) or to go into the genius bar.

It looks like there are already a few of us with the problem and I'm sure it will only escalate as time goes on.
 

thespyglass

macrumors regular
Aug 22, 2008
168
0
Liverpool UK
Aw man, having an external monitor was going to be my at-home solution to not having the MBP screen :mad:

Please keep posting here if you're having this issue. Is it the Mini DisplayPort?
 

chisoxbull

macrumors member
Jul 7, 2008
47
0
Scottsdale, Arizona
A bunch of us have been trying to figure out the issue and we have not been able to. We have also been talking on the apple support forum. Many of believe the software is the issue, but we will have to wait and see.
 

logana

macrumors 65816
Feb 4, 2006
1,396
8
Scotland
Do the new aluminium MacBooks come with 10.5.5 - because there appears to be a lot of people with problems using 10.5.5 and external monitors ......

They all seem to be on the discussion boards at Apple.....
 

DaveOZ

macrumors 6502
May 13, 2008
373
291
Same here. Just plugged my new MacBook into my ACD24" this morning. Was working fine, although not as crisp as my old MBPro drove it. Went may a tea and cam back to find the screen asleep. Move mouse and the ACD went nuts and flickered then dropped out to the coloured fuzz shown above. :( Hope this is not a hardware fault or it's going back!
 

fatefulwhisper

macrumors regular
Jul 24, 2008
171
21
I have the same exact problem w/ a Samsung 22" LCD using the mini-display port to DVI. It would either come up scrambled or I would get no display response AT ALL! This is after coming back from a display sleep for a period of time.

The temporary "fix" I have done is to turn off my external monitor and to sleep the display (via Ctrl+ Shift + Eject) when I'm going to be away from my computer. I always leave my notebook on all day and night and never turn it off. I've gotten used to doing this as a habit everyday for the time being until they fix the issue.
 

pcolton

macrumors newbie
Nov 12, 2008
1
0
I am having the same issue with my new Macbook Air. I think it's the new graphics card.

How I deal with it is unplugging the monitor cable from the adapter, then plugging it back in -- that seems to fix it each time.

I hope there's a software update to address it.
 

chisoxbull

macrumors member
Jul 7, 2008
47
0
Scottsdale, Arizona
Same problem on my colleagues new AluBook and 23" ACD.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=AgbN1NlWsLA

He has tried everything suggested in this thread on the Apple support forum, with no luck.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread....78812&tstart=0

He also spent a good amount of time on the phone to Apple technical support and they had no solution either.

Apple is aware of this problem. Please refer to the following article:

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...tebook_orders_plans_fixes_for_new_models.html


This is a known issue and will hopefully be updated with a software patch.
 

dalvin200

macrumors 68040
Mar 24, 2006
3,473
69
Nottingham, UK

tubbymac

macrumors 65816
Nov 6, 2008
1,074
1
It's a pretty common problem with the new Macbooks on various external monitors, including Apple Cinema Displays. The only workarounds I've found with my Dell 2407 was to either:

1) CTRL+SHIFT+EJECT to sleep the monitor and then any key to resume
2) replug the mini displayport adapter
3) prevent "display sleep" if using bootcamp Windows and just use "sleep"
 

DrunkOnWine

macrumors newbie
Dec 9, 2008
1
0
I am having the same problem with my 2.4Ghz Macbook and my Cinema Display. It blinks black every 10-15 seconds until I replug it. I also get faint horizontal lines of "static". Re-plugging solves it.

I've also noticed another couple graphical glitches - every once and awhile, icons in the menu bar (upper right) seem to disappear, shift, and then reappear. I've only noticed this happening when I'm not using the external monitor.

Perhaps the worst glitch I've seen has to do with tearing during vertical scrolling. For example, in the Date & Time preference pane -> Timezones, if you scroll through that list, sometimes it'll all tear/blur together and you can't even read it. I've seen this happen plugged into the external monitor -- a reboot has solved it.

Looking forward to a graphics update...

JP.
 

dalvin200

macrumors 68040
Mar 24, 2006
3,473
69
Nottingham, UK
i mainly use external display with my MB when watching movies.. and my quick & dirty solution has been to use VLC instead of quicktime/front row

lets hope 10.5.6 fixes this issue anyway
 

cammonro

macrumors member
Dec 10, 2008
51
0
For the record, I have the 2.53 GHz MacBook Pro and it also has this same problem with an external display. I've spent hours working on this issue and it's cost me a lot of work. I just spent an hour on the phone with AppleCare and their temporary solution was to deactivate sleep mode when using an external display. Unfortunately, even that did not work for me. Sometimes, it renders my MB completely unusable and I have to do a hard reboot.
 

manuel.mx

macrumors member
Nov 4, 2008
68
0
you can press control+****+eject, it wil sleep the displays, but when you wake them up you wont see all that interference. Instead of unplugging or rebooting.
 

cammonro

macrumors member
Dec 10, 2008
51
0
Good to know about the eject key combo. I still get the static occasionally but I think I've found the right settings to make the computer usable temporarily by disabling energy saver completely. My mistake was that I had only disabled computer sleep. Even display sleep apparently throws things out of whack.

I have to say it's all a little incongruous. Using my MacBook was like a dream until I plugged it into a monitor then I felt like I dived back into PC Hell.

Looking forward to that software update!
 

manuel.mx

macrumors member
Nov 4, 2008
68
0
ill try to disable energy savings too....

I would be ashamed of my laptop at school while giving out a presentation and having all this noise on my image. I hope they fix it soon too.

In my case it is worst, if i use pure dvi and high resolution, i get noise all over the image. I have to use dvi to hdmi converter.... lame.


Anyways, the combination is control shift and eject, I think i had a typo in "shift" in my previous post. lol
 

Kurota

macrumors newbie
Dec 11, 2008
1
0
Silicon Valley
Software updates may not be able to fix the problem

I have the exact problem and it gets very annoying. Despite Apple's claims that they may be able to fix the problem, I'm not so sure after reading this article:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer...le-macbook-pros-have-nvidia-bad-bump-material

If this turns out to be cause of our problems, we may all be facing is a massive recall. I'm not looking forward to that possibility as I really love my unibody MBP15.
 

cammonro

macrumors member
Dec 10, 2008
51
0
Some of this is a firmware issue. It was supposed to have been fixed with Leopard 10.5.6 but was not. Last I spoke with AppleCare they said they know about it and are working on it but it is sure infuriating. If you connect/disconnect your external monitor in the wrong sequence there is no return from the black screen of death. Ctrl-shift-escape does not work. You need to do a hard reboot. It is the only solution.
 
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