Macbook Pro's Screen Doesn't Always Work

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Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hey,

I have a base Santa Rosa Macbook Pro (2.2GHz, 2GB RAM, 128VRAM, etc)

Fairly often (like 1 in 10 times of sleeping), when I wake my macbook pro from sleep or just waking the display back up, the display doesn't do anything.

When I wake the entire computer, I'll open it up, and I can hear the hard drive and fans spin up, but the display does nothing. Closing the shell back up does nothing: the light on the screen latch stays solid and the computer still runs. The only thing I can do is force-shutdown the computer by holding down the power button.



At first, I thought it was because of the iStat Pro widget (i googled my problem, and others were having the same problem due to iStat Pro). That made it less frequent, but it still happens... I've also tried resetting the SMC, which I've actually started doing once every 2 weeks or so. But it still persists.



What kind of thing could cause this?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    I have the same Mac and the same problem. I bought the machine about 5 months ago from the Palo Alto Apple Store. It has not had this problem until recently, and it seems like it started after I attempted to install the HP Printer Software for my HP PSC1610 from the CD. When I installed the software really weird stuff happened, like 3 separate install windows were spawned, and it gave me both success and failure messages.



    Afterwards I tried to clear out remnants of the failed install, but it's hard to know what was added by the installer and what comes built in with Leopard. My problem had been that the printer worked, but I couldn't scan.



    I don't have iStat pro, but I do have iStat nano.



    Other interesting things:



    Plugging in an external display works! When I do so, my MBP screen turns blue, and I can move the mouse around it, however none of the windows show. Exposé does not reveal windows from broken screen, but they ARE there and can be interacted with via the keyboard at least (not sure about mouse input).



    Even more interesting. I have a Microsoft wireless mouse with a zoom feature. If I click zoom and move to the edge of the external monitor, I can see the contents of the MBP screen off to ths side (since the zoom feature always keeps the mouse centered).



    My instinct currently is that it has something to do with the failed HP install...
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  • Reply 2 of 4
    Great to see this post.



    Similar problem here guys. MBP + Apple 23" cinema display = disaster. It will NOT start up correctly from standby, and I end up having to force shutdown.



    If Apple are saying the MBP lid must be left open (for cooling) when using an external monitor, why isn't there a function to turn the MBP monitor off in this mode? Instead the screen just goes light blue, the mouse is there but no one is home. It then normally cycles between turning off and turning back on and asking for a password then turning off again.



    Maybe the after-market docking station would sort this?
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  • Reply 3 of 4
    Have the same problems with my 2.2 MacBook Pro.



    its about 20:1 that it happens, sometimes it helps to plug in an external monitor and plug it of.

    This works only sometimes.
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  • Reply 4 of 4
    smaxsmax Posts: 361member
    Same deal here. :-/
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