cinema display recognized, but black with non-working power button

everyone go to this link and try this....my second monitor actually came on when i restarted!

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304123

i have not shut down though yet so it could just be coincidence lol

I found this and it worked for me I guess whats important is to zero the info on screens so that it resets - I did the below its important to start up with apple "s" - write the code below - worked right - I had tried to trash the window plist file manually and that didn t work but starting in safe mode did - hope this helps

http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n106564


Method 2

This works when Mac OS 9 is not available on the computer's hard disk or on a CD-ROM disc.

Warning: This section involves use of the "rm" command. Be sure to type the commands exactly. Typographical error when using the rm command could result in severe data loss, up to and including all information on the computer. To verify characters and spacing, you may copy and paste the text from your web browser into a text editor, such as TextEdit.

1. Start up in single user mode by pressing and holding the Command-S key combination when you turn on the computer.
2. At the prompt, type: mount -uw /
3. Press Return.
4. Type: rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist
5. Press Return.
6. Type: reboot
7. Press Return.


When the computer restarts the preference is recreated with default settings.

I too had this issue, starting last week after a software update. I am running two 23" displays on a MacPro that is running 10.4.10.

Someone earlier mentioned resetting System Management Controller (SMC) to solve this problem:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304123

I went back to the software update control panel and noticed that Apple was offering a "Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update." I thought this was fishy - maybe Apple saw the issue and offering a fix. I did three things that seem to have fixed the issue:

1) Installed the Mac Pro SMC Firmware Update
2) dumped and reinstalled the freshest iTunes and QuickTime
3) followed the directions to reset the SMC at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304123

Everything appears to be working well now.

I'm having the exact same problem, monitor is recognized, mouse still pans into the display space, but its still black. I can activate stuff blindly so its being recognized but no image. I had the problem a week ago and powered down, changed the outlet it was plugged into and restarted then it worked. This time same problem but no luck with getting it up and working even after trying to switch plugs. I have plugged a different monitor in and it works fine.

I am having this issue with on a 90-day, 3-GHz Quad Core, running 10.4.10 with a 9-month old 23" Cinema Display. I am growing more convinced it is a software related issue.

If I put my monitor to sleep it will not wake back up. I can restart and it remains black with even the little tiny dot light black. The tower is powered up and can be accessed remotely via any other computer on my network.

In addition, if I try to hook up my old CRT display it won't turn on either. However, if I plug either display into my laptop... voila--both will work.

It has taken me as little as 15-mins or as long as 2-hours to get the ACD back up and lit on my mac pro. Zapping the PRAM or pushing the magic button inside appear to have no bearing on resolving the issue. It is amazingly frustrating, however, I am now just not letting the display ever go to sleep. I am going to trying downgrading the OS to see if it goes away. I never had an issue until last week AFTER the software updates.

Anyone have similar experiences?

I am having the same problem on both windows xp and windows vista.

I have had the 23" cinema display for over a year and it seemed to always work fine. Then I noticed recently that it wasn't staying off at the end of the day when I would leave my computer on the login screen. If I powered it off, it would pop right back on about 5 seconds later. So I decided to unplug the little white connecter that goes into the power supply. The following day when I plugged the monitor back in, it would not come on. The white power light was not lit, and pressing the touch sensitive power button on the side of the monitor usually did nothing, but sometimes produced short flash of the white light. That was on windows xp, with an nvidia video card.

So I figured it was fried, went out and bought a new monitor and brought the cinema display home to see if I could get it to work at home.

So I plugged it into my vista PC (also with an nvidia video card), powered up, and lo and behond the cinema display came right up as soon as I turned the PC on and showed the post screen etc.

My power settings on the vista PC are set to turn the display off after 20 minutes. The first time that happened, the monitor would not turn back on, even though the PC was "awake". Because I had a secondary monitor plugged in, I could tell the PC was on and functioning, and just the cinema display would not come back on.

After many reboots, pulling of the power plug, disconnection from the PC, etc I finally noticed that the white light wasn't on. So I disconnected from my PC, unplugged it and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then I plugged the power back in first and waited. After about a minutes, the white light came back on. So then I connected it to the PC. As soon as I pushed the power button the little white light went out, and I was expecting the monitor to pop on, but it didn't. But this time I decided to wait. I could tell the login screen had come up because I heard the little song Vista plays right before the login screen appears, so I blindly logged into Windows. Still nothing. So I waited.

About 5 minutes went by, then all of a sudden the display came on as if everything had been fine all along. I proceeded to use the computer normally for several hours without any kind of problem.

At the end of the day I shut the computer down completely.

The next day when I turned the PC on, the same thing happened...screen stayed black, I heard the login song, blindly logged in and about 3-5 minutes later, the monitor came on out of nowhere.

This now happens every day. The only difference is that sometimes it is 3 minutes before the display pops on, and sometimes it is 15 minutes, or anywhere in between.

Surely there is something wrong with this monitor, or perhaps the power supply is shotty.

Anyone tried replacing the power supply in similar situations?

Regards,
Josh

this has just started happening to me too...its like the monitor is on but its black...the system even recognizes that there are two monitors, etc....
until i read this thread i thought it was a bad power brick because i have been doing the whole unplug-plug thing and it works most of the time immediately......after reading this thread i do recall that this started happening after installiing that latest quicktime/itunes update the other day.....

are you saying to remove those updates and evreything goes back to normal... I too am experiencing problems with the cinema display... the pci card that handles two of my three screens refuses to load the cinema display and when I ve got the two nonames up the desktop won't mount and the cinema display remains dark and everthing worked fine until the july 18th update of quicktime an itunes - is there a work around ? thanks

Yes, I am experiencing the same issue as well. It must have something to do with the recently-installed software updates.

My aluminum case 23" ACD stays black when the computer is revived from sleep mode and takes anywhere from 3 minutes to 15 minutes to turn back on. On the other hand, my 17" ASD LCD display (connected via DVI-ADC adapter) responds almost immediately. I can see the mouse pointer activated on the ASD but a completely black screen persists on the larger 23" ACD display.

Initially, disconnecting and reconnecting the 23" ACD's power cable from the power brick helped. It would bring the display back to life. But now, this action seems to have no effect at all. Repeated restarting the computer and cycling through sleep-wake mode with the Mac power button also has no effect.

Right now, I have no option but to wait for the display to activate on it's own time. I have noticed that many times it takes 10-15 minutes for the display to turn on. After that, if I can avoid the sleep-mode, I can continue working the whole day without any problems.

Has anyone discovered a fix to this problem? Is is a software issue or is the power brick faulty?

Powermac G4 867 1.5 Gb + 23" ACD + 17" ASD Mac OS X (10.4.10) ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 256 Mb AGP Graphics Card

i was planning on reformatting my system anyway once i got my laptop fully functional and all my files backed up, so hopefully this will help confirm the software update suspicions....

i'll probably do this on wednesday or thursday so i'll let you all know what happens.....

anyone else had any luck? i have tried the plug and unplug trick..sometimes that works sometimes it doenst...also tried putting it to sleep with mixed results as well.....

Dang! I too have this same problem... tried different plugs, unplugging this, unplugging that... so I guess I'll try the sit and wait routine and see if that works. Does an apple tech usually read these discussions and help out? I hope so.

I just got mine working again. here 's what i did... i had my smaller monitor plugged in and running with my machine on. my 23" apple cinema display was completely unplugged. i plugged in the power to my apple cinema display and then plugged in the monitor cable to my G5. the monitor came on and pow it was working 🙂 the only thing i had to do was swap the display order in the system prefs. hopefully it continues to work properly from her out.

Just for the record - this has just started happening to me today.
Been using my G5 with 23" ACD for over a year, every day with no problems. Was working this morning, rebooted, display simply would not come on. Almost as if no power to is, but if I keep pressing power button on display, will occasionally get a tiny flash of white power light.
Tested with another monitor - G5 sees the ACD no problem. Very frustrating. Have tried unplugging a thousand times, nothing seems to work for me. Have also tried the waiting game for up to an hour a few times, nothing.
Now what??!?

Mine suddenly just started working again yesterday - out of nowhere, after the 1000th restart, it suddenly switched itself on after about 5 minutes.
Worked all the rest of yesterday.
Worked again this morning having been off all night.
Stopped working again after my computer put itself to sleep during lunchtime.
So now I am right back to square one - just hoping it will decide to power itself back on again, then I will never ever switch it off!!!
This is crazy.