Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Leopard - MBP Screen Goes Dark

A

arcobb

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 3, 2005
250
5
Colorado
Hiya Peeps!

I've got Leopard installed on a 2.2 SR MBP. Since installing it my screen will to dark after a minute or two even though "Put the display(s) to sleep" in energy saver is set to 30 minutes (or if I go to never) and screen saver is set to never. If I move the touch pad or type, the screen comes pack to full brightness. Just a pain if I'm watching a youtube vid or reading what I just typed. I erased my drive and did a clean install of leopard and reinstalled my software.

Any ideas what's going on? Anyone else experiencing the same issue? I'm kinda thinking that this is a bug in Leopard. 10.5.1 soon (crossing fingers).
 
arcobb said:
Hiya Peeps!

I've got Leopard installed on a 2.2 SR MBP. Since installing it my screen will to dark after a minute or two even though "Put the display(s) to sleep" in energy saver is set to 30 minutes (or if I go to never) and screen saver is set to never. If I move the touch pad or type, the screen comes pack to full brightness. Just a pain if I'm watching a youtube vid or reading what I just typed. I erased my drive and did a clean install of leopard and reinstalled my software.

Any ideas what's going on? Anyone else experiencing the same issue? I'm kinda thinking that this is a bug in Leopard. 10.5.1 soon (crossing fingers).
Click to expand...

Try setting your power option to Better Performance.
 
triddent222 said:
By 'Dark', you mean, completely off, or just "darker" ?
Click to expand...

By dark I mean the computer is still on and the display is on, but the backlight is completely off. Like when your computer goes into power save mode to turn the display off to conserve power but the computer itself is on.
 
Screen goes dark (not dim), too!

I have the same problem on my MacBook Pro Core2Duo 2.4GHz after Leopard installed.
 
I have the same issue with my 2.4 SR 15" MBP. It appears to be a bug.

Under energy savings, when you enable to option to dim the display before putting the display to sleep, the display will dim after about 3 minutes. If you disable that option, the display will shut off in about 3 minutes (instead of not dimming which is what's supposed to happen); additionally, the display sleep light on the latch does not turn on until after the specified time that you have set for the display to actually sleep.

So the only option you have now while running on AC power is to either have the screen always dim after 3 mins (which I personally hate, especially with LED backlight where it doesn't matter) or have it shut off after 3 minutes....there's nothing in between you can choose.

Previously in Tiger, upon reboot the screen would dim no matter what you had set under a custom power profile. As a workaround, you had to select another profile and then select custom again, at which point the screen would not dim as specified. This workaround does not work under Leopard.
 
taphil said:
I have the same issue with my 2.4 SR 15" MBP. It appears to be a bug.

Under energy savings, when you enable to option to dim the display before putting the display to sleep, the display will dim after about 3 minutes. If you disable that option, the display will shut off in about 3 minutes (instead of not dimming which is what's supposed to happen); additionally, the display sleep light on the latch does not turn on until after the specified time that you have set for the display to actually sleep.

So the only option you have now while running on AC power is to either have the screen always dim after 3 mins (which I personally hate, especially with LED backlight where it doesn't matter) or have it shut off after 3 minutes....there's nothing in between you can choose.

Previously in Tiger, upon reboot the screen would dim no matter what you had set under a custom power profile. As a workaround, you had to select another profile and then select custom again, at which point the screen would not dim as specified. This workaround does not work under Leopard.
Click to expand...

I'm glad I'm not the only one with an issue ... I think.

We'll lets write apple and ask them to include a fix when the release 10.5.1 ... Seems like a simple thing to fix. Thanks!
 
arcobb said:
I'm glad I'm not the only one with an issue ... I think.

We'll lets write apple and ask them to include a fix when the release 10.5.1 ... Seems like a simple thing to fix. Thanks!
Click to expand...

How does apple usually handle fixes, and updates to the OS? Will it be downloadable or something since we bought the original leopard?
 
thegrandmaster said:
I don't think this is a Leopard issue. This has happened on my Tiger MBP since I got it and I'm sure there are other threads here and on Apple's forums with the same complaint, I'm pretty sure it isn't new.

Edit : http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304092 that's not new, this is a fairly long-standing problem.
Click to expand...
That's a different issue. I had that problem with Tiger, too, but the new one (after installing Leopard) is that the backlight shuts completely off (with the LCD screen still on), in my case after only a minute or so.

Edit: 15" MBP 2.2 SR w/ LED backlight
 
Hi Guys

I've got the same problem but worse. My screen goes dark before I even get the chance to change settings. Can't see a thing. Have tried shining a torch on to the screen with limited success. Any other help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Phil
 
What if you uncheck the box under the power options/options that says "darken screen before going into screensaver?"
 
djinn said:
What if you uncheck the box under the power options/options that says "darken screen before going into screensaver?"
Click to expand...
That doesn't make a difference. No matter what the power saving settings are, the backlight shuts off after only about a minute of not touching anything.
 
im sorry if someone mentioned this and it didnt work.


On my System Preferences I go into Energy Saver, change the settings for "Battery" and then where it says "Sleep/Options" I click on options.. There are 3 options, the second one says "Automatically reduce the brightness of display before display sleep", you could try unchecking that and see what happens?
 
Yep, that's what I said above. When you uncheck that option, that's when the screen shuts off after about 3 minutes. If that option is checked, the screen dims like it's supposed to. But there's no way to have it not dim because it's broken.
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one with this problem!

My MBP SR 2.2 has developed a weird brightness problem only since installing Leopard. I can't quite work the pattern out but it seems to do both plugged in and on battery. The screen dims a little and then seems to come back to normal every minute or so. This wasn't happening under Tiger!

I sure hope they fix this soon - it is incredibly annoying!

MadDoc,
 
picture1vc8.png

I solved my problems by unchecking the "Automatically adjust brightness" option.
 
Unfortunately it didn't work for me either. I hope Apple can fix this with an update.
 
Related problem: Leopard installer causes blackout

I can't even install Leopard because, once I boot from the CD and the Language Selection screen shows up, my MBP screen goes black. I have a monitor attached to it and it displays an outer space image. If I boot from CD with no monitor attached to it I still get the black screen.
 
I spoke with Apple support for over 3 hours today. We tried the following:

1) New user account
2) Reset PRAM
3) Run from install disc
4) Reset ?? (where you remove the battery etc etc)
5) Renew system configuration folder
6) Archive and install leopard (originally was an update)
7) Hardware check (extended check) - all ok

Nothing worked. Would be great to hear if anyone else has had any success getting around this issue. It really is a pain.
 
Screen going dark on install?

Hey, this worked for me on my 17" MBP. Go to displays and scale back the resolution. Anywhere in the 1280 range should be good. Click "Detect Displays" once for good measure to make sure it's not trying to find your secondary display, then install. Mine came right up, bright and clear as day. Peace!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back