External Display Blacks Out

I have MacBook Pro 13" (early 2011) hooked up to an external display. With Snow Leopard this setu worked fine. But after upgrading to Lion the external screen constantly blacks out. I've seen some suggestions saying that it might be the adapter but, as I said, this setup worked fine in Snow Leopard so I find it unlikely to be an adapter issue.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to fix this problem? It's extremely annoying.

This has been fixed in one of the latest OS updates.

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ITunes Visualizer on External Display Blacks Out Main Display

Is it possible to have the iTunes Visualizer full screen on an external display while keeping the main display active?
In other words, I'd like to have my 2nd monitor display the iTunes Visualizer in full screen while I do work on my main screen. Every time I try this it forces the main screen to go black.
Does anyone have a solution, or is this just the limitations of iTunes and/or the Mac?
(By the way, the closest I've come is to put the iTunes window on the 2nd display, start the visualizer, and make its window as large as it will go. But, you still see the top of the iTunes chrome above and below the visualizer.)

I realise this is an old post, but have not yet seen an explanation of how I have solved this problem.
Its not a complete solution as it only works if you want to use iTunes, and does require an iPad or an iPhone.
First configure the Apple remote App on your iPhone, or iPad, or both iPad is best, but iPhone works almost as well.
Check that you can control the music from your i'Device'
Drag the iTunes window onto the external screen/projector. I am assuming external monitor with a different screen geometry to main screen, but if you can handle some gaps, you can mirror displays just as well.
Turn on the Visualiser - and put it into full screen.
If you can't see the external screen the following short cuts are useful.
⌘T - turn on Visualizer
^⌘F - turn on Full Screen
Your main screen will blank out, but you will still have full control of your music from the Remote App.
Very cool if you are having a party, and want the visualiser on the large LCD TV, or on a projector.
Steve

Display blacks out

so on my ibook g4 mid way through using it the screen blacks out (there is a very faint glow) this is happening more regularly now and atm as a temporary fix i just close the lip and open it.
iv looked through some forums and it seems like a problem that i cant fix myself...
but i was wondering can i just connect the laptop to an old display i have? or that display black out as well.
any help would be great, thanks.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!
When the display blacks out, can you shine a flashlight through the back and still see your desktop? If so, you likely have a problem with the back light or inverter or possibly a cable, which will affect the built in display. Since you can see your display at times, I imagine that the graphics chip itself is still working OK.
Is your old display an external display? If so, it should work.
Good luck!

HT5219 Apple thunderbolt display blacks out and blinks

Hi,
I have a macbook pro (2.5GHz Intel core i7, 16GB RAM and 10.8.5) for which I use Apple Thunderbolt display as my extended monitor and almost everyday after connecting my external monitor for 3 or 4 hours, Apple thunderbolt display blacks out and starts blinking or displaying weird colors on every blink.
To stop it from doing that, I have to disconnect and reconnect my thunderbolt display.
Is this is universal problem or something wrong with my macbook pro ?

I've got two 27" Thunderbolt displays hooked up to my Mac Pro. Both displays blank out irregularly multiple times per hour.
I've exchanged one of the displays for a brand new display and the problem continues.
I've updated both displays using the firmware update a few months back and the problem continues.
I'm using separate Thunderbolt cables rather than the built-in cables and the problem continues.
Bullocks.

27 inch thunderbolt display blacks out after Thunderbolt Firmware Update 1.2

Bought 2 new 27 inch TB displays for two different machines and after a couple of days the Thunderbolt Firmware Update 1.2 appears on my Mac Pro with one of the displays installed. So I install the firmware update. Now my display blacks out periodically and I keep getting Graphic Display Errors with a request to sent the errors to Apple. Running a 32 GB Mac Pro (late 2013 circular style) I have three monitors connected (two 20 inch cinema displays and the new 27 inch display). This machine is supposed to be able to handle three 4k monitors or 6 standard TB displays. I've seen the posts about the blacking out with this monitor but I didn't have any problems before the firmware update and now I've got them pretty regularly. I had the blacking out problem on an earlier monitor and took one of the monitors back and Apple gave me another one and this is the replacement. Same problem, but this one only started after the update. I'm hoping someone from Apple reads these messages and can let me know what's up.
BTW, I also have an older 27 inch Apple monitor that ran perfectly on this machine so I'm disappointed that I spent all this money and now get the blacking out issue.
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
Processor 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5
Memory 32 BG
Graphics AMD FirePro D300 2048 MB

I have my Thunderbolt display connected to my MacBook Pro and have been experiencing the same issue, getting worse over time. The folks at my local Apple store did not know what to do about it. So, I looked around and tried different thing.
The one thing that seems to be working is to System Preferences > Build-in Display > uncheck “Automatically adjust brightness.”
I hope this helps.

DISPLAY Blacks out sometimes

Most of the time when I sit back down at the computer desk my display black out for a second. The light turns of, but it comes right back on. Someties it does it several times before it stops. I know thta there is alot of static in my apartment. Does anybody know anything about this? If so, is there anything I can do to prevent this?. It is pretty annoying. Any help would be appreciated.
Oh yea, the display is a Starlogic

I have a Mac Pro, and a Mac Mini. I have owned tha Mac Mini for about two years. I have found the same issue with my mac mini. I do believe that it is normal, and it has something to do with the shared memory. I ran it for over a year as my main Mac, and I experienced the very same thing. I don't think it is anything to worry about, unless it happens over and over. My Mac Pro does it form time to time, although very very rare. It also could have something to do with the display, analog vs digital etc. I believe the digital signal experiences very short interrupts every so often, and that in my experience is normal
MacPro Mac OS X (10.4.8)

External Displays Black Background

I work with two external displays and yesterday I unplugged my MBP to go to a meeting. When I returned and plugged my monitors back in both their backgrounds were black. They work fine and I can drag applications into them and be displayed but I can't shift the black backgrounds.
If I open system preferences it launches fine and if I select Desktop & Screensaver the panes launch in all three monitors and display their current background. If I change the background it changes in the preferences pane but not the actual display. If I mirror all monitors it displays fine on all three. The only inconsistency I've noted is that when adjusting backgrounds the pane on the right hand display adjusts the background in the central (primary) monitor. This right hand display is also the actual laptop with the two external display positioned to the left.
Obviously not a critical issue but I would love to get to the bottom of it.

Hi rossmatt06,
If you are having intermittent issues with the external displays connected to your MacBook Pro, you may find the following article helpful. In particular, if at all possible I would test with different adapters to try to rule out an incompatibility.
Apple computers: Troubleshooting issues with video on internal or external displays
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1573
Regards,
- Brenden

Using HD plasma as external display, black border around mac desktop

Hey all, I'm having some difficulty setting up my Panasonic plasma tv as an external display for my Macbook. Whenever I hook up the display I am faced with thick black borders around the mac desktop on the external display. I have messed with the resolution setting for probably 2 hours with no success and the borders persist. I have it hooked up via an hdmi to dvi cable connected to a mini dvi cable. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get it to display full screen on my plasma display without the borders? The displays native resolution is 1024x768, I believe. Any help would be appreciated!

The problem isn't with your mac, it's the settings on the Plasma.
Make sure you are outputting the correct resolution (1024x768 you said), although are you sure the display doesn't want 1366 x 768? That's what mine wants through it's DVI board.
Once that's set, if you have boarder alignment problems then you need to adjust the overscan settings for that input.
If you have a commercial version of the Panasonic it's easy, just use the Picture Pos/Size button on the remote to get to the menu to adjust it. If you have a consumer version Plasma, then ?.. It might be buried in the service menu? I don't know, but once you figure that out you can adjust it. Do a search in avsforum.com for your model number + overscan and you'll find the info you need.

Disconnect+reconnect external display = washed out image

hi guys
I need some expert help on this. Using a Dell E178 WFP external display on my 2010 Macbook Pro via mini-DVI-to-VGA adapter. This display has no EDID it seems so I use SwitchResX to create the necessary resolution override (1440x900). SwitchResX has nothing such as daemons or helpers installed on top, so this boils down to graphics drivers.
My problem: When I reboot the machine, the display has the necessary brightness, contrast, and colour balance. If I unplug the display, wait a sec, then plug it back in, the image comes up very bright and washed out, and I can't get a "true" black out of the display.
What this isn't: I have a ColorSync profile, and make sure it is successfullly loaded, i.e. I go through the trouble of opening up system preferences>displays>color to make sure it reloads. This is not a ColorSync problem. It is not the 2.2 vs 1.8 gamma problem either. Ctrl+shift+eject does not fix it. Creating a new colour profile does not fix it either. The usual SMC, permissions, safe boot, etc tricks don't work either.
Apple engineers have sent me a copy of TimingSnoop but were baffled by the display having a "fake" EDID (when run without SwitchResX TS detects no EDID at all). Since I refused to roll back my entire system to 10.6.4 or uninstall SwitchResX (it does not interfere??) they closed the bug stating "insufficient information".
10.6.4 did not have this problem, and my hardware is perfectly fine.
Rolling back the graphics to 10.6.4 fixes this issue (but creates other issues)
I'm looking for information on this. Has anyone had the same happen? Is it confined to sans-EDID displays?
Have googled a lot but I'm running out of search terms... Anything could be of help?
Thanks in advance.

Again, this is not the gamma problem that's fixed by just opening the display preferences and resetting the colour profile.
This seems to be somehow related to the display's EDID and the video adapter (Nvidia) not resetting properly when first unplugged and then plugged back in. My support request with Apple is more than a year old in total now and replies have been trickling but all of them add little (if anything at all) to a fix.
My particular problem is finding these "a lot of" people who are experiencing this problem. Everyone I've seen so far talks about the gamma/colours problem, never about the brightness and reboot. So yours is the first instance of someone having exactly the same problem. Hopefully we can find more people? Do you know where I should be looking?
Another idea I've had is to possibly talk to the OSX86 community? If Apple are not interesting in issuing a fix for this, maybe someone else has done some work? After reviewing Apple's code (at least that part which is made public) I'm pretty convinced this is in Nvidia's territory, and that gives me very little hope..
I'm interested to know if this has been fixed on Lion at all..? Ideas?

A new 23" studio display blacks out from time to time

Just got this great new display. Once a day maybe, the screen goes black for about one second, then pops back up.
What could be causing this?
G5, single processor Mac OS X (10.4.7)

One thing to consider, maybe you accidentally move the mouse into the sceensaver hotspot and then once it starts to black out, then you move the mouse to turn off the screen saver and it seems like it blacks out?
Mac Pro 2.66 Dual-Core Mac OS X (10.4.8) Adobe CS2

External monitor blacks out

The external monitor I use with my MBP has stared blacking out - usually for about 30 seconds, sometimes more. Any ideas how I can fix it?

Originally Posted by ammtosh
I would try the French service, Toshiba is an international company. If you have a problem with your Italian car in France you go to the French workshop...
Yes maybe you are right. Still, annoying not being a fluent French speaker to have to deal with them.... and with 90% possibility that they'll say "if you bought in Italy you should talk to them". I'll try.
PS: another ridiculous thing: you buy a product that has a problem, and you need to pay to call the support service? Really not acceptable....
The dark side is strong.... actually, I start wondering which is the real dark side. Theory of relativity!

Portg Z30-A-1E1 - External monitor blacks out randomly

Very annoying problem - every now and then the monitor blacks out for 2 seconds and comes back.
Monitor is powered all the time.
HDMI cable changed twice and does not solve the problem.
Seems like a change of resolution or a reset - can the problem be in the graphic card? Otherwise maybe the HDMI port itself detecting strange stuff?
Please help I'm getting crazy as I work 90% of the time on external monitor.
Thanks
MAx

Originally Posted by ammtosh
I would try the French service, Toshiba is an international company. If you have a problem with your Italian car in France you go to the French workshop...
Yes maybe you are right. Still, annoying not being a fluent French speaker to have to deal with them.... and with 90% possibility that they'll say "if you bought in Italy you should talk to them". I'll try.
PS: another ridiculous thing: you buy a product that has a problem, and you need to pay to call the support service? Really not acceptable....
The dark side is strong.... actually, I start wondering which is the real dark side. Theory of relativity!

HT6114 external display cutting out

since the new update every few minutes my external display keeps cutting out and have to unplug and re plug the hdmi cable back in

Hey there jamie0105,
It sounds like your external monitor is not funcitoning correctly with the computer after updating to Mavericks even after reseating your HDMI cable. I recommend these troubleshooting steps from the article named:
Apple computers: Troubleshooting issues with video on internal or external displays
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1573
Reset the system
You can reset the Mac's parameter RAM and SMC.
Reset the resolution
Start by resetting the Mac's parameter RAM. If the display does not come up, was previously set to an unsupported resolution, and still results in no video:
Start up in Safe Mode.
From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences.
Choose Displays from the View menu to open the preferences pane.
Select any resolution and refresh rate that your display supports.
Restart your computer.
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
All the very best,
Sterling

Display blacked out

All of a sudden, my MacOS display has blacked out (background) and all icons and pix look like negatives. I've checked all Preference settings and can't find anything wrong. Anyone have thoughts? THANKS!

Try control-option-command-8 and see if this is it.

MBP C2D 15" display blacks out!

My week old MBP C2D 15" blacks out on me. I find that it happens when applying light pressure on the back side, at a surface square underneath F1 - F5 - F - Caps Lock. Light pressure makes it flicker, a little harder results in complete black out. Obviously a production fault and I will of course take it in when I have time... this is my work tool so no way I can just leave it in for days. But that is another issue. Maybe someone else experience the same black out? My build is 8N1037

Hello
Did you find out the reason? The same message shows up in the system.log of my iMac Core Duo after the Mac OS X 10.4.9 Update, but the iMac works fine.
Cleaning all caches, repair user rights, PRAM and SMC Reset didnt help. Also no luck with Preferential Treatment tool to check for corrupted preference files, it didnt find corrupted plist files.

External Display Blacks Out

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