sbuzby

Q: Mountain Lion keeps forgetting display arrangement

Hello,

 

I have a brand new 12-core Mac Pro using two ViewSonic VA2026W displays. Every time I shut down and start up my Mac after installing OSX 10.8, my display arrangement is reversed from how I had it set before shutting down. This happened once with the original install of 10.7, so I switched the cables around thinking I had put them in the wrong order, and it never happened again. It doesn't seem like I should have to switch the cables again just because it's a new OS. This problem never occurred on my older 6-core Mac Pro on 10.6.8 using the same exact displays.

 

I understand that I can go into the system preferences and change the arrangement back, but that becomes pretty annoying having to then drag windows back where they are supposed to be and resetting wallpaper. I saw something about how the OS might not be able to tell the difference between the two displays, but why would this just become a problem with 10.8? And please don't say I should purchase Apple displays, they are absurdly high-priced.

 

Thanks for any advice you can provide!

 

Sam

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 8:36 AM

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Q: Mountain Lion keeps forgetting display arrangement

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  • by RVHernandez,

    RVHernandez RVHernandez Aug 5, 2012 7:35 AM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 5, 2012 7:35 AM in response to sbuzby

    This is also happening to me and yes, who manufactured the display is irrelevant. I have had dual monitors since System 7 and have never had to keep rearranging display arrangement each time I start up. I don't know what the solution is, but it is definately a bug in 10.8

  • by mlbreit,

    mlbreit mlbreit Aug 13, 2012 8:32 AM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 13, 2012 8:32 AM in response to sbuzby

    Same issue on 2009 MacPro here. Since installing Mountain Lion, display arrangement gets forgotten after every shut down or reboot. Very annoying.

     

    Also lamenting the loss of the Display resolution menu bar item. Why not leave it as an option for those of us that want to change screen resolutions often?!

  • by mikeyknob,

    mikeyknob mikeyknob Aug 21, 2012 9:59 AM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 21, 2012 9:59 AM in response to sbuzby

    Same issue with my setup...  Others suggested zapping P-RAM, which didn't help.

     

    I've had this setup for 2+ years with no issue...  it's only a problem now since upgrading to Mountain Lion.

     

    Here's my post about it:

     

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/19267434#19267434

     

    If anyone has a solution, I'd appreciate it!

     

    Thanks.

  • by RVHernandez,

    RVHernandez RVHernandez Aug 21, 2012 10:04 AM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 21, 2012 10:04 AM in response to sbuzby

    So, I may have solved it. I ran Disk Utility to repair permissions thinking that the system wasn't able to properly save the preferences. After it repaired permissions (which it really didn't show that it repaired any) it seems to remember the Display Arrangement now...

  • by mikeyknob,

    mikeyknob mikeyknob Aug 23, 2012 10:48 AM in response to RVHernandez
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 23, 2012 10:48 AM in response to RVHernandez

    that didn't work for me...  any other ideas?

  • by sbuzby,

    sbuzby sbuzby Aug 27, 2012 2:52 PM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Aug 27, 2012 2:52 PM in response to sbuzby

    Thanks everyone,

     

    I tried your suggestions and everything else I could think of, nothing worked. Today I finally decided to completely rebuild my user account. That solved a lot of issues I was having with my dock and desktop preferences being forgotten with every restart, but my computer still swaps screen arrangements about every other time it restarts, seems to be completly at random.

     

    My solution now is to keep restarting until the displays come up in the correct arrangement (usually within 2 or 3 trys). I also have stopped restarting/shutting down unless I absolutely have to.

     

    Hope that helps some of you.

  • by RVHernandez,

    RVHernandez RVHernandez Aug 27, 2012 3:06 PM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Aug 27, 2012 3:06 PM in response to sbuzby

    Yeah, repairing permissions yielded mixed results. It worked on a few restarts. It's back to being random... but consistently annoying!

  • by RVHernandez,

    RVHernandez RVHernandez Sep 5, 2012 9:06 AM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Sep 5, 2012 9:06 AM in response to sbuzby

    I've zapped my PRAM and it seems to have worked the last few days.

  • by Scott Finlayson,Helpful

    Scott Finlayson Scott Finlayson Sep 23, 2012 3:52 AM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (22 points)
    Sep 23, 2012 3:52 AM in response to sbuzby

    I noticed this issue immediately when I updated (on day-1). I have been on the phone 3x w/ Apple Support (they were VERY fast and courteous). Sadly, after numerous screen-sharing sessions, reboots, P-RAM zappings, et-al... there is still no solution to the problem.

     

    I, too, have used multiple monitors since the early days and have *NEVER* run into this issue. And for those who aren't noticing it; it's NOT just forgetting the display arrangement. I use 4 monitors on my Mac Pro and it forgets:

     

    - Arrangement

    - Menu Bar location (different than arrangement)

    - ColorSync profile assignment

     

    All of my displays are calibrated using a 3rd-party device, but after reboot, the ColorSync profiles stay assigned to the monitor it THINKS it is on, which shifts the color drastically in the wrong direction.

     

    So after every reboot, I need to open System Prefs, arrange my displays in the control panel, reposition the menu bar to the correct primary screen, then reapply the correct corresponding ColorSync profile to each display. *AND*... it is totally random. So with each reboot, it could be an entirely different arrangement than the last reboot.

     

    My last discussion w/ Apple; they had no idea why it was happening but the engineers had all the logs and reports they could gather from my machine and were looking into it.

     

    PLEASE!!!! This forum is NOT ENOUGH for Apple to know you're having an issue. If this is happening to you, CONTACT THEM about it. They might not have an answer for you about fixing it, but the more people that report this problem, the sooner it will get fixed. Thanks.

  • by kgatter,

    kgatter kgatter Oct 1, 2012 6:51 PM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 1, 2012 6:51 PM in response to sbuzby

    I'm also having this issue. Its massively annoying, I use external monitors in three different places regularly and it is really such a stupid bug.

    so: UP UP

  • by MusicMango,

    MusicMango MusicMango Oct 9, 2012 9:05 PM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 9, 2012 9:05 PM in response to sbuzby

    I'll chime in here... I was having the same (and other) problems... I upgraded to Mountain Lion, and suddenly my 6-screen setup stopped working. Two monitors "sort of" died.  They were black, but I could mouse to them... clearly a software problem. And I was losing my configuration between reboots. I reverted to Lion... until an upgrade for that wrecked my system again, and it was only with some fiddling around and unrotating some monitors that I could stabilize things... though, still losing config between reboots.

     

    I chose to throw some money at this problem, and upgraded my 3-GeForce120s to 2 Radeon 5870s, thinking newer hardware would resolve things. Indeed, my 6 monitors are now working... but still, the conf-reboot issue. I came on here, found this thread and tried the two fixes -- reset the PRAM/NVRAM and also repair disk permissions.... and having done that, it works!  So, something somewhere corrupted something, and repairing it fixed it, and the problem is now gone.

     

    I realize there are people on here who've tried those two little tricks and it didn't resolve things, so it got me thinking, as a software developer, what the heck could be going on here? The only thing that comes to mind is that your system is running something that's continually corrupting those permissions and/or the state of the memory segment of relevance in the PRAM. Given, as far as I know, that user processes can't (shouldn't) corrupt that sort of thing, it leads me to suggest breaking down the problem in the way we used to do it on the old PC days with its multiple vendor hardware and device drivers. Get rid of everything that's not "stock" and see if the problem goes away, then add things back in one by one till the problem re-surfaces.

     

    Given we're all running the same hardware and operating system, my suggestion to those still having the problem is this: get rid of all of the autostarting processes in your machine. Get to the point where you can boot/reboot cleanly and nothing starts up.  Repair permissions and zap the PRAM/NVRAM. Then see if the problem is still there. I wonder if doing that would make it go away in some cases...?!?

  • by BSO1604,

    BSO1604 BSO1604 Nov 24, 2012 9:27 AM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 24, 2012 9:27 AM in response to sbuzby

    I am having the same problem. But I notice that it docent forgets to which display you assign a background picture.

     

    I have a different picture on each display and every time I boot they remain in the right place, so why the monitor arrangement and the menu bar location can't keep their setting?

     

    I can even swap the cables, boot the system and the system will keep the background pictures in the right place. Some how the system remember the location of the Displays.

     

    I never had this problem before I update with mountain lion.

  • by Scott Finlayson,

    Scott Finlayson Scott Finlayson Nov 24, 2012 9:56 AM in response to BSO1604
    Level 1 (22 points)
    Nov 24, 2012 9:56 AM in response to BSO1604

    I didn't notice the desktop image part of it because I use the same background for all displays.

     

    One other (odd) thing that I noticed a couple days ago... if upon reboot, I had to rearrange (fix) all the things I mentioned above, it seems to still think the "desktop" is originally located where it was upon reboot. In other words, if the menu bar was incorrectly located on my far-right monitor when I rebooted, and then I had to move the MENU BAR to the middle screen to correctly assign the desktop to the correct monitor, I would now notice the following:

     

    If I drag a file/image from a browser widow to my middle desktop (the one with the menu bar)... I noticed it wasn't appearing on my desktop at all... so I'd try again... nothing... and again... nothing. Then I hit the function key that shows JUST the desktop and noticed it dropped the files on my FAR RIGHT monitor's desktop behind iTunes.

     

    There's clearly something going haywire with Mountain Lion's ability to store/retrieve/manage the displays and while it's not the end of the world, it really **IS** raising the frustration factor - along with the now-steady stream of Kernel Panics ever since the Mountain Lion update... but thats another topic altogether.

     

    I really HOPE that Apple hasn't written off the "Pro" user... or what I consider the "PowerUser" that needs more than an iMac or Mac Mini. Please, Apple... don't forget us...!!!

  • by Syncopator,

    Syncopator Syncopator Jan 2, 2013 12:39 PM in response to sbuzby
    Level 1 (124 points)
    Applications
    Jan 2, 2013 12:39 PM in response to sbuzby

    Just chiming in to say I'm having the same issue.

     

    I've used dual 30" Apple displays for nearly 10 years, and never experienced anything like this until now. The reversed-display issue began the very day I installed Mountain Lion (two weeks ago).

     

    At the time, I restarted once, and all was back to normal. So I dismissed it as an anamoly. Since I only restart this machine when necessary, I'm just now seeing this issue again today.

     

    There's a modicum of comfort in discovering you're not the only one with the problem. If nothing else, that suggests it's not something unique to your own setup. Still, this is a seriously annoying issue. And, as mentioned above, the fear is that those of us with "pro" setups are now in such minority that Apple is less aware of our issues.

     

    Please, please, please -- let's all contact Apple about this so they're aware of it and can work to resolve it.

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