Phantom monitor

I've brought the old G4 400 out of mothballs. I've upgraded it and all is well. Except for one small detail.
I've used dual monitors for years so even this old clunker has two video cards. Thing is that even though there is no monitor attached to the second video card the computer insists on configuring to one. It's very disconcerting. The cursor keeps disappearing off to the right, and occasionally a window opens on the phantom monitor.
Suggestions?

Thanks for the responses guys. Unfortunately I got no notification of the replies so I'm getting these suggestions too late. I simply removed the video card. That solved the problem.
BTW, there were no adaptors.
I would have loved to have tried the placement suggestion, but it's too late now. The computer is now at my sister's house hundreds of miles away.
Again, thanks anyway.
PowerMac G5 dual 2.7, PowerMac G4 single 1.25ghz, PowerMac G4 500, 2 PowerBook G4 AL 15 1.25 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

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Boot camp installation attempt yields black screen, also phantom monitor

Hey all,
So... I went to install XP on my early 2008 MacBook Black. I've done it before, so I figured there wouldn't be any problems (I had previously removed it). Only, when I attempted to boot from the CD... it appeared to boot, and I heard the CD drive working, but all I got was a black screen. Not even a blinking cursor. I know the CD is fine as it works in virtual machines. I attempted to use my Vista disc on my MacBook just after this and got the same result: drive access sounds, but a black screen.
Then I discovered another problem... my Mac has a phantom external display. I almost think that perhaps when I boot off a Windows CD, that perhaps it is trying to use a display which doesn't exist? I won't really be able to test it until I get home (I'm out at college) and can plug in my external display...
I had an external display hooked up in a previous installation of OS X... I pulled over the settings from that previous installation via time machine after reinstalling. That would certainly explain the phantom display. What is not explained is why I can't get rid of it. I've been trashing the plists that other threads recommend, resetting the PRAM... nothing really works. Detect displays doesn't help either. I'm wondering just what I have to do to get my Mac to realize there is no external monitor. I've read numerous threads on this, all culminating in no avail. Any advice, anyone?

I tried resetting SMC too... still nothing. I almost think I should try booting from OS X's install CD, and see if the phantom monitor exists there... if it does, then I know there's a hardware problem of some kind. If it's not there, then I should reinstall OS X, and pull stuff over from Time Machine manually instead of automatically this time. I'm guessing that if I pull over user accounts automatically that it will recreate the problem. My only problem with doing stuff manually is that I'll have to jump through a few hoops to get my iTunes library back.

Can't delete Phantom Monitor in Display Setting

Does anyone know how to delete a phantom Monitor that is showing up in
my display settings.
I cannot seem to get rid of it and cannot run i1Pro software

No, I have Cinema Display and a Cintique.... I've never had this problem before
and don't know where this 3rd monitor is showing up in my display panel

Phantom non existent external monitor on Mac book pro

Hi all, whenever I open my mac book pro, or wake it from sleep, the screen turns blue and it auto-detects a monitor that is not attached - a generic VGA display - the image at the following URL displays when an external monitor is NOT attached:
http://ellington.tvu.ac.uk/images/displays.png
I have to click 'detect displays' between 8 and 14 (sometimes more) times to trigger another detect routine that always changes to reflect the actual state of monitors.
I have a cinema display and when connected to the MBP - on start-up or awaking from sleep, the MBP often fails to detect the connected monitor and yet displays the same display status as above a generic VGA display - click 'detect displays' 8-14 times and it detects the cinema display. Whenever the machine / display sleeps, it seems to be a lottery as to whether the true display status is retained or whether the MBP detects the phantom monitor, blackens the cinema display and requires the (getting very tedious now) detection routine to get back to what's expect. At that point, all windows have resized and shifted position. I've described the problem to several in-store genius's with no obvious answer. I did not do a clean install from Tiger, but wonder if it would've helped.
What do you reckon? Hardware failing or some strange software problem?
Thanks in advance, Ian Grant

Yesterday I found the same problem. I disconnected from a Dell Projector and then later that night I noticed that my computer still showed two monitors. I'm still able to connect to an external monitor and it will detect it. However, immediately after disconnect the phantom display is back.
A little annoying because I'm always having application windows open on that phantom display.
Also I noticed that when I plugged into the projector the color was off significantly, as if there was a bad connection. I tried a variety of connectors and connected my laptop to a variety of different external monitors and all of them work flawless except for the Dell Projector. (I didn't try it on another projector because I only have the one.)
My conclusion is somehow when I disconnected from the projector I hadn't fully shut down or gone to sleep or my computer was in the middle of a disconnect when I closed the lid and this interruption as my computer transitioned from 2 displays to 1 created the phantom display. Hope to see a solution to this.
Thanks

Phantom second monitor

Okay, everything was fine til I thought zapping the PRAM might be a good idea yesterday. Not. Finder icons were intermittently not showing up. (hmmmm... now I wonder if the problem might actually have preceded my "fix.")
I'm running 10.3.9 on an upgraded Ethernet dual with a partitioned HD. Zapping the PRAM made the system forget which partition it was supposed to use, so it started up in my stripped down emergency partition, which contained only a system folder. With that as my startup drive, I couldn't even access pref panes to assign the other partition as my startup. I managed finally to solve that headache finding the Startup Disk in the other drive, succeeding in rebooting in that one. Then I CarbonCopy cloned a set of what I thought the small system partition was missing (user, library, pref panes, etc) into the stripped down drive. I then ran Disk Utility and Permissions repair on both partitions. Took about two hours, but got the system acting sane again. All good, BUT...
Now my system believes it is set up with a second monitor, my real monitor set at 1024x768 and a "phantom monitor" at 800 x 600 -- so of course, now I keep losing my curser of the edge of my real monitor into the void of the non-existent one. My guess is that it's reading monitor info off each of the two partitions.
Any suggestions on how I can get the phantom display to go away? No easy "disable second display" button seems to exist...
Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to ... get clever ...

Hi! As you have learned if you want a second smaller partition for emergency use then do a min install and don't install or get rid of the additional languages. But leave everything else. As I recall it takes 6-10 gigs for a basic install. To solve your mouse problem go into the system prefs and open the monitors control panel and see if it shows you both monitors. Click on the title bar in one of them and drag them apart so they aren't touching or drag so they are only corner to corner. Wherever they touch is where the mouse can pass from one to the other. Tom

How to go back to a one-monitor setup in Photoshop?

I use Photoshop on a PC.
At home I have a dual monitor set-up, and have Photoshop stretched across them. So I place my tools on one monitor, and image in another. It works great.
I am staying at someone else's house for the summer and brought my computer along and one monitor only. Everything else about my computer is working fine, except Photoshop. It still thinks I am using two monitors. I can see the tabs, and maximize the window. But when I open Levels, or Hue/Saturation, the pop-up doesn't appear on the screen. I can tell it's appearing in the "phantom monitor", that isn't really there, because I can't do anything else in the program until I exit out of Levels (by pressing Enter, as if I were pressing OK). It's also a problem when using the eyedropper, since I can't see the swatch window that is supposed to pop up. Yet, I can see Layers, Channels, and so on. Anything that can be tabbed I can see. Anything that is a pop-up, I cannot.
This is totally bizarre. Especially because no other software I am using is exhibiting this problem.
So basically I'm asking the opposite of what most people ask: How can I return to a one-monitor set-up in Photoshop?
Thanks!

Probably one reason why they invented workspaces in later versions.
You're not seeing a 1 pixel hint of them at the very edge of the screen are you? If so you might be able to grab them and pull them into view.
Assuming you're not doing something else wrong and somehow missing the dialogs, I'm kind of out of ideas.
-Noel

OS X 10.8.3 breaks Displays preferences, introduces serious bug

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I'm using a 3,1 MacPro, ATI Radeon HD 3870 and ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT, one Samsung 1920 X 1200 monitor and one Princeton 1280 X 1024 monitor... yet look at the sceen shot of the third "phantom" VGA monitor that 10.8.3 thinks is plugged into my system.

Same here, except with a MacBook Pro Retina 13". My external LaCie 324 screen hooked up with display port to DVI adapter works fine when I boot but once the MacBook comes back from sleep I get flicker and snow making it unusable. Unplugging, replugging, restarting the Mac, power cylcing the screen: nothing fixes the issue appart from doing an SMC reset. Once I do that, the screen works flawlessly again until the Mac goes to sleep and wakes up again. This only happened with 10.8.3.
I've been calling Apple about the issue, the guy told me it looks like a software issue and recommended I reinstall Mac OS X or downgrade to 10.8.2. Issue is, I'm an iOS developer and Xcode requires the very latest Mac OS X to run (if not now, then in a few weeks) making downgrading a poor choice. I'll be reinstalling my system from scratch to 10.8.3 but from what I'm reading here, it doesn't look like a good solution either. I'll keep you posted if it solves my problem.

APP exporting to A Media Encoder - not launching

I am going to export my video from Adobe Premier Pro to Adobe Media Encoder. Everything appears OK, Media Encoder launches in my doc, but i can't see the Media Encoder window with the cued items in it. I cannot figure out how to view the Media Encoder Window. I'm on a Mac working with CS4 for both softwares. Anyone else have this issue or an idea?
It was working great for me at the office today. Only thing i can think is that i had an external monitor plugged into my MBP there, now i'm just using my laptop. Do you think the Media Encoder window could be displaying off my screen? Can't figure out how to view it.
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Going between the laptop's monitor and a dual, often causes issues like this. Basically, the other window/program is now off-screen on what is now a "phantom" monitor.
I'd try again, at work, and think about the change that will take place at home. Drag all programs to the laptop's monitor, before you close.
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Hunt

PHantom external monitor

I use an external monitor at work and just the MacBook Pro LCD at home. Every time the computer wakes up from sleep, even though it is not connected to a monitor, it still thinks there is an external monitor and resizes the LCD screen display to 800x600 or some other useless size. Using Detect Displays in the Displays prefs will eventually make it switch back, but often it takes several minutes and 20 tries to get it to recognize that there is actually not a VGA monitor there. I can find no pattern to what makes it finally realize there is no external monitor. Anyone know how to remove this annoyance?

I have a related problem. I use my MBP with external displays quite often. Trouble is, especially when I have the external set as the main monitor (but often so when that's not the case), when I unplug the external, the MBP doesn't properly sense that change of state. That means that windows end up getting "displayed" on the phantom, erstwhile external screen and, if the external was the "main" (with the control bar at the top), I lose access to my menu bar.
Sure I can diddle with the Displays PrefPane (I had to write a macro to invoke it for the instances when the menu bar is absent). The workaround doesn't always work, either.
Worse still, yesterday when I disconnected from the external monitor in my office, my MBP continued (evidently) to behave as if I was still working, so it didn't so to sleep. Once home, about an hour later, I took the MBP from my briefcase and it was sizzling hot. I sense that had I not discovered the problem then I could well have fried my MBP.
This sort of behavior is the opposite of the smarts my 15" G4PB exhibited. not only did it properly sense the changes, it "remembered" monitors of the past and immediately reestablished the configuration I had when last connected to a specific monitor. This is far, far worse.
I've tried zapping the PRAM, as well as all manner of other fixes, and nothing works. Is this a hardware problem?

Program/Applications open on phantom second monitor

I used to have a second display connected to the iMac. After upgrading to Lion, I disconnected it as it does not really work in the full screen display with Lion. However, some of my programs that were on the second display still think its on that second display. Despite the fact that there is no second screen attached or configured in Displays control panel.
It is annoying because a program will be open, however, I cannot find the program (other than seeing the menu bar on the top). When I click in the Dock, under OPtions, and show program or move to this screen, then I see it (or when I go to Expose), but I can never drag it permanently to see it on the main screen.
Help!
Jonathan

After many days i found solution:
Run the client and get it set up the way you prefer, or Open your saved RDP file
On the Display tab, choose a non-fullscreen resolution.
On the General tab, click "delete these credentials", if possible.
Click Connect .
You will immediately get a local login dialog. Leave it blank and click
OK .
When you are connected and the remote login dialog appears, drag the window to the desired monitor.
On the remote login dialog, click Cancel . The settings dialog should reappear locally.
On the Display tab, you can now choose fullscreen.
You can now save your session with the Save button on the
General tab, as well as save your login credentials.
Try more times ,worked for me.

Windows 7 and Multiple Monitor Issues

Alright, I have spent the past 3 days searching these forums as well as on Microsoft's support pages and all of Google to find the answer to my issue and it seems as though I'm the only one who is running into this problem.
I have a 15 inch Macbook Pro with the GeForce 9600M GT Nvidia Graphics card with the latest version of Mac OSX and Bootcamp installed on it. I have Windows 7 installed in bootcamp. I just purchased a Mini DisplayPort to VGA cord with a VGA cord so as to connect my computer to my Sony Bravia HDTV to use as a second monitor. I plug in the cords, plug them into my TV, and put it into the proper input and it works like a charm. Then I go and boot up in bootcamp under Windows 7, plug in the cord, and my screen gets to the "starting windows" logo and then it goes black. I push ever button, I try control alt delete, nothing. I have to hold down the power button to turn off the computer and then turn it back on.
I turn it on, boot up into Windows 7, let it load, then plug in the cord, and the computer display instantly goes black, again, and yet nothing displays on the TV. Again, I try everything to no avail, so I power it off and back on. I go through this at least 10 times to no avail. I finally give up and try again the next day.
Next day, I plug it in, and the monitor stays up, but yet nothing is displayed on the TV. I go to my resolution settings in Windows, and go to the multiple monitors tab, and select every possible option (extend, duplicate, etc) and nothing will display on my TV. I try to change the settings to which it responds with "unable to save display settings" and nothing changes. I attempt to enter the nvidia program and make changes that way. The TV is detected, but when I select it and attempt to apply anything, no changes take effect and I am left with only the laptop display. Keep in mind I uninstalled and reinstalled all of the video drivers and such.
Finally I get fed up so I purchase a Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapted and a DVI to HDMI adapter. I try again. Again in OSX it launches immediately, no problems. I go back into Windows, and immediately I'm dealing with the instant black screen.
I'm going crazy over here trying to figure this out. I know it's possible to do this because I've seen people on youtube doing this and again it works on OSX so why the heck won't it work? If anyone has any idea what's going on here please help me out. Thanks.

JonMarx... I'm having the exact same problem. I'm in the exact same situation as you are. I'm going mad, and it's only by divine providence that I've finally located the only other person who knows what I've been going through. I've spent at least 20 hours trying to get this started back up, to no avail.
I had the secondary display working peachy for a while, long enough to configure everything to be exactly how I wanted it. I unplugged the monitor from the computer just to see what would happen, and that's when the problems started. I managed to get it to work one last time for a brief period a few hours later, but the way it just clicked on made it feel too good to be true.
I've had a wierd problem with a phantom display as well. The display will frequently show up as being available in both the nVIDIA panel and the windows settings, but if I apply the settings, they won't go through. I got a few screenshots of it the last time it happened.
I was just about to reinstall windows completely, but it seems that I'll just run into the same problem again if I do... Here's to hoping a solution is found.

Strange dots in Phantom "packed" .cine-files with Mac OSX 10.9

Hi there
I have problem with my Miro .cine-files. After upgrading my operating system to MAC OSX 10.9 (Maverick) I found strange dots on the right side of the frame in my footage shot with the Phantom Miro 320LC.
I first thought it might be a bad pixel on the camera but then checked older footage of the same camera that was already edited and working perfectly fine. Even those .cine-files now have those dots in Premiere CC, Speedgrade & Davinci Resolve 10 Lite (FreeVersion). I also own the GlueTools Plugin for the .cine codec and if I load the files into AfterEffects the dots are NOT there.
Screenshot Premiere CC - top right & bottom right of the frame
Screenshot AfterEffects w/ GlueTools Plugin
Another work-around is to load the .cine-files in the PCC-Software and safe them as "unpacked" .cine-files. The dots are gone in all programs mentioned above. The only program that interprets the footage correctly is Davinci - all other programs show the file approx. 2 stops darker and have the same overall green tint to it.
Have you encountered the same problems? Did you find a solution beside downgrading OSX to something like 10.6.?
As a reference I uploaded 3 files into my dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/aukk8hj8xjhkp1r/AACd5LwaanRKj4xhF1SHPrSla
1. file: c_15153_187_ORG.cine --> original .cine file from Miro
2. file: miro_test_unpacked.cine --> original .cine file converted with PCC-Software and safed "unpacked"
3. flie: miro_test_packed.cine --> original .cine file converted with PCC-Software and safed "packed"
I'm working as a Highspeed-Operator, the post is normally done somewhere else and the systems vary from MAC to PC with Adobe, Avid or ...
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Kind regards
torsten

Is anybody from Adobe monitoring this issue? I'm having the same problems with Premiere and .CINE files. Previewing them looks fine (no longer having the darker issue) but when I render, it becomes green and pixelated.

Monitoring 2k footage via SDI, Premiere CC, Decklink Studio

Hello all,
System specs:
MacPro 4,1 2.26Ghz 8 core, 32 GB RAM, OSX 10.8.4
Adobe CC
Resolve 9.1.5
FSI LM-2461W
BM Decklink Studio 2
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After searching the forums, I'm here seeking the collective wisdom of the Adobe CC user base.
I'm working in a 2048x854 timeline and I'd like to be able to monitor the timeline in Premiere on my external monitor with a Decklink Studio via SDI. No flavor of 2K sequence preset seems to work. If I take my 2048x854 timeline and nest it in a 1920x1080 timeline, boom, the image shows up and plays back on my external monitor.
Both Resolve and After Effects are capable of sending a signal to my monitor that will play back, while still working in 2048x854 timelines and comps.
Thoughts? Workarounds? Both AE and Resolve work, which makes me think this is a Premiere thing, like it isn't capable of downsampling to 1080, but I could be wrong.
Thanks for your time.

Yep, that's what I figured. Kinda lame, considering the other two thirds of my post workflow, After Effects and Resolve, seem to handle this without a hitch.
Should have spent the extra $300 for the Decklink 4K, although I have a feeling I would still be in a similar situation, given that my monitor supports 2048x1080 and I'm working at 2048x854, not to mention that it leaves me high and dry if I need to work with 4k in Premiere.
The workaround would be to work in a 2048x1080 timeline, but since we're working with different flavors of resolution, 1080 Phantom and 2K, 4K and 5K Epic footage with all different kinds of resizing, reframing and cropping, I would need a 2.40 matte over the edit/finish timeline to have some sense of the actual framing and then either nesting the sequence in a 2048x854 sequence or copy and pasting the final piece from the 2048x1080 timeline to the 2048x854 timeline. Neither of these options is very appealing to me when I could just be working natively in 2048x854 and skip all of this, like I am with AE and Resolve.
I'm liking most of what Premiere is offering, but there are some details that make me think the people engineering this software don't actually use it. Like needing to have the Program monitor in focus for the "create still" key command to work or some key commands that should always work, regardless of what window is in focus, like toggling targeting. For some inexplicable reason, the "Show in Finder" command does not work in the timeline. It works in the project tab and "Show in Project" works in the timeline.
Anyway, off to the Adobe feature request/bug report site, which incidentally crashed my browser and lost my request the last time I tried to submit one.
Good times.

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Alright, for at least a month now I have had "phantom" unexplained music playing on my MacBook. I don't know where it came from or where it's coming from. It is there most of the time, but some times it will stop and then start again. Does ANYONE have any idea where to start with this? I am so lost / confused. Anything that I could try to do myself would be great, otherwise I'll have to make a trek to the Apple Store. Thanks!

For reference, here is what I have open in my Activity Monitor:
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Message was edited by: aqua*star

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Besides this, the Duet sounds awesome w/out the FW800 HD plugged in.
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Phantom monitor

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