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Display flashes to solid black intermittently

I originally posted this in the wrong category for the MacBook Pro instead of the Monitor catagory. I am wondering if anyone else has the same problem. I posted the following last night.

*Still an unknown issue with Apple Tech Support*? After 2 calls to product specialists and apparently an undocumented issue by any customers contacting tech support this seems to be a widespread worldwide issue. In one form or another with no answer after several months of the computer release displays are blinking, flickering and flashing to name a few descriptions of this problem. Mine flashes solid black for a fraction of a second and comes right back on. I have had this issue in the power saving mode as well as the better performance mode so that kills that theory. To this point there has been no pattern that I have been able to detect. I can go for weeks without a blink and all of a sudden get 2 in 5 minutes. Usually I am pretty good at troubleshooting but this problem has no pattern and is so intermittent I think it's going to be a tough one and I truly believe Apple has no clue as of yet so they are not addressing it publicly or to individuals calling in with the problem. I purchased my computer November 29th. I used it for over a month without ever seeing the issue. When the new monitor came out I still did not experience any issues with either display in the area of blinking, flickering or flashing. There is a video on Youtube that I have located showing the exact same issue as mine. Though the person on Youtube has a non-apple display and mine is the new 24" Apple display and it is the exact same issue this rules out the problem being the external display. Well, I can check that off as well. This is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-dQIgfIFsI Does anyone else have the exact same issue as mine? I am thinking maybe it is something in the 10.5.6 update. Who Knows?

*BTW this problem is not at all heat related.* It can happen during heavy use or very light use at low temps. I have purchased many newly released Apple Computers over the years and have actually had great luck with them. I hope this is not my first lemon.

MacBook Pro (late 2008) 2.53GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.6), Apple LED Cinema Display (24" flat panel)

Posted on Feb 10, 2009 11:35 PM

Reply
515 replies

Mar 20, 2010 6:51 PM in response to Christopher Twomey

I haven't read all of this - just the first couple and last couple of pages.

I bought my Apple 24" monitor last May and never had the problem of it going to black for a second until this past week (assuming it didn't do it when I wasn't looking!). I use it with my Macbook (aluminum - November 2008, I think). The macbook is closed and I run it the power adapter all the time while at home, which is basically all the time.

It has happened 3 times in about 5 days. The last time, yesterday, I was going through a major restore of my iphone. I also had Apple Mail, Firefox, iTunes, Numbers, and text edit open except for textedit, that is about normal. I was typing an email when it happened.

I'm not sure what updates I've done leading up to this, but I'm pretty sure I've done the Apple updates within a day of them being released.

I had made some changes in the display and computer sleep so I looked at that. I noticed that they were both set to the same time. Also, my screen saver was set to the same time (all 15 minutes), so I changed both sleep modes (screen at 20 minutes and computer sleep at 25) again so that they were different.

So far, the problem has not occurred since, but, since it has not been very common for me, it will take much longer before I could say that made a difference. But perhaps some who have this problem a lot more often may want to check their setting, just in case this is a factor.

Oh, my screensaver takes pictures from iphoto to display.

Another thing which could be related, though I doubt it. Normally I'd get the screen saver, then the display would go to sleep, but for a much longer period of time, I'll find this isn't working. If I reboot, it works normally. Not sure if I was ever able to just quit and relaunch some programs to get it to work. This problem has been happening today.

Mar 23, 2010 5:35 PM in response to dbk9999

Just an update. Since I made that change in sleep settings for display and computer, I haven't seen the problem. Granted, it hasn't been very long, but it's better than nothing!

I'd really like to see some of you who have far more common problems try the changes I described and report back on whether it worked or not.

Mar 24, 2010 12:43 PM in response to dbk9999

Hi, dbk9999!

Unfortunately different sleep timings didn't help (i have 10 and 15 minutes). And it seems that monitor flash occurs frequently and frequently from day to day:( Very annoying. You have Mac OS 10.5 and if that sleep settings helped you we are all hope that it's the software bug and 10.6.3 patch will fix this terrible problem.

Mar 26, 2010 3:54 PM in response to dbk9999

Hello. My Apple LED Cinema Display (24" flat panel) started flickering on and off about two weeks ago, on a regular, daily basis (the monitor is about 2-months old). One time, the monitor just went dark and I could not wake it at all without restarting the Mac. I thought the problem could be related to the Energy Saver CP so I set the Display Sleep to "Never" (I read how others on this forum tried the same). The problem appeared to stop ... for a while. Yesterday, it started again with an additional behavior: The screen split into 4 parts (2 on the upper half and 2 below) and if flickered on and off until I shut down the Mac. That was so much "fun". After I restarted, it all was back to normal. so far so good.
I have read of the firmware update but that's for the bigger, 27-inch monitor; however, the symptoms addressed appear to be the same affecting my 24" monitor ...

Mar 26, 2010 4:40 PM in response to Christopher Twomey

Hello All,

Well my problem is still here. I agree with the fact that my MBP 17" does not flicker or do anything even while running side by side with my 24" LCD Apple display. The LCD will black out etc but the laptop is rock solid. Most often I have been restarting my computer every day and a half. It seems like the issue takes that long to come back. I have not tried replacing cables etc. as some have. I am living with the problem. Is everyone using the power cable from the LCD to their computer like the mini or the MBP? Is there a difference with or without using that cable?

Apr 6, 2010 12:13 PM in response to Azura Anon

Guys please! This is no software issue at all! I even got those bugs immediately after a restart.
The bad thing with those bugs is, that those are hard to reproduce.

Maybe it's the display, maybe it's the nvidia garbage gpus. Maybe it's the stupid mini-dvi adapter. Who really knows?
I only know, that those display issues aren't the only one i am dealing with.

Beside the graphic issues with the LED ACD or the attached Samsung 24" TFT (at work) i got an other more serious issue:

I am working within an windows 2k server network accessing some windows drives with samba and I am connected with a cad server (archicad bim). Within the last 2 months both screens, the one of my macbook pro (late '09) and the attached samsung display didn't woke up after i set it to sleep during lunch several times. The macbook pro wasn't at sleep at all, the LED on the front wasn't flashing and the HDD was turning but both displays stayed solid black. Unplugging the display, trying to set the macbook to sleep by closing the lid - nothing helped, so i had to kill it by holding the on/off button.

I could go on telling you all the other issues i got with other apple products (ipod, macbook,…) but this isn't the right place. In my opinion apple got a really bad quality management…

Display flashes to solid black intermittently

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