Blank display after sleep. Please help

Question

My MBP wakes itself every day at 6:00. For the past few days, when I've gotten to it around 6:30, the display has just been...blank. The keyboard illuminates and my cursor shows up, but the login window is nowhere to be seen. I've waited for it, and end up having to hold down the power button and start her up again, something I was used to with windows. Is anybody else having this problem? It has also occured any time after it's slept for a while. Does anyone know how to fix it?

Answer 1

Hello,
It seems that a lot of people are experiencing this problem, judging by how many boards there are for it...
I too am having the same problem. My MBP is a few weeks old, and I've only started noticing this problem in the last week or two. Sometimes my MBP wakes up fine, sometimes it takes it a few minutes, and sometimes I'm forced to restart it by holding down the power button. It seems to be worse when I've had my computer in sleep mode for long periods of time.
I don't use any external monitors, and I don't keep USB devices or anything else connected to the computer when I close it. It makes no difference whether it's charging or not. I have a few 3rd-party apps installed, but the problem started before I installed any. I've tried closing all programs before putting my computer to sleep. I've stopping letting it sleep overnight (and instead shut it down). Nothing helps.
The problem occurred for me again just now, which is what prompted me to check the support boards. When I open my MBP after it's been is sleep mode, it makes the little disk drive startup noise, but the display remains black. Sometimes when I open my MBP, the keyboard will light up (sometimes only for a second, and other times for longer). Just now, when I held down the escape key, it made that little "pinging" noise over and over again while I held it down (in the Sounds menu under System Preferences, they call it "Funk"). And what I thought was the most interesting was that when I pressed play on my Apple Remote it started playing the first song in my iTunes library. All the controls on the Apple Remote worked fine - I could play and pause the song, skip to a different song, adjust the volume, etc. Yet the screen remained black. Pushing keys and using the trackpad did nothing. I tried closing the computer again and this time the light remained on (instead of flashing like it does when it's in sleep mode). But when I opened it back up, the screen still stayed black. So obviously, the computer was running fine, it was simply a problem with the display.
Does the Apple Remote work for anyone else when they're experiencing this problem?
This problem is really starting to get on my nerves! Hopefully Apple will do something about it soon!
Kate