Mac Pro sometimes displays static after displays wake up from sleep

This happens on my 2010 mac-mini (either HDMI or mDP port) and on a 2009 macbook unibody using the mDP port (haven't seen it on the macbook display).

I used to think that it had to do something with nvidia or my Dell monitors (2408WFP) but seeing what's going on in this thread since 2009 with other graphics and monitors I can't say that anymore.

Just confirming it isn't just the Mac Pro that does this.

I've had this issue (static after sleep) with both a hackintosh and a 2010 Mac mini, using dual display on identical Acer displays (193W). This article concurs with my own findings:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-20055828-263.html

In summary: re-sleeping, power-cycling the affected monitor, and setting the screen saver to activate before sleep all serve as work arounds.

Sooo I just got my 2011 Mac Mini and the same problem.

I have 2 24in Monitors, and the one connected to the HDMI port via HDMI to DVI is the one having the problem.

Can someone remind me why I just spend extra money for Apple products when it seems they let a pretty big problem like this go un-addressed for two years?

I am not 100% sure this fixed it, but the gray screen did not come back after this. You may not be able to do this anyway. But I was having two problems, 1. when the computer went to sleep and came back the desktop wallpaper would be gray on my main screen, 2. randomly my 2nd display (which was connected to HDMI via a converter) would display colored static and need the screen to be restarted.

After reading the other thread about the static some people were saying it might be the HDMI copy protection messing up. So I removed the Apple HDMI to DVI converter and connected HDMI stirght to HDMI into my Dell 24in display. My 2nd display is older and did not have HDMI in so I plugged that into the Mini-DVI port on my Mac Mini. (Basically switching the two monitors around on the outputs, maybe that fixed the gray?)

When I booted back up I put the machine to sleep several times and the gray background problem is gone so far. And I have not seen the static (yet) but the static is more random and harder to test if it's truely gone.

I am keeping my fingers crossed.

@CodemonkeyX:

"Can someone remind me why I just spend extra money for Apple products when it seems they let a pretty big problem like this go un-addressed for two years?"

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I posted in this thread back in September 2009, when it was much younger than it is now. I had just bought my Mac Pro (early 09) with Snow Leopard then, and experienced the snow/static on wake from sleep problem from the beginning. I tried every possible combination of cabling from the computer to the monitor. The only one where I can't say for sure whether the issue would have reappeared eventually is the one where I adapted the machine's HDMI port down to the monitor's VGA port. I didn't stay with that one because the display quality deteriorated to an unacceptable degree.

The static problem persisted with every other cable combination. As someone else has pointed out here, the problem has NEVER appeared when I booted from my Boot Camp drive with either Windows XP or Windows 7. Because I spend a fair amount of time in Windows, I have to conclude that it's not a hardware issue, but specifically an OS X video driver issue.

I contacted Apple tech support a week or two after I bought the computer. They responded by connecting me with someone in the role of "Senior Advisor". Initially we spoke on the phone and later by email. He told me that the issue was now logged as a high-priority item with Apple engineers. In the ensuing 20 months, I contacted him from time to time to ask about progress, and he replied diligently every time to say that the problem was puzzling the engineers but assured me that it was still high priority. After one of the Snow Leopard updates, he emailed to ask me if it had fixed the static problem. It hadn't. After that he stopped asking, but I continued to email him after every system update anyway, to point out that this one hadn't fixed it either. He replied with stuff like, "Thanks for the update," "the engineers will be disappointed," etc.

Over time it did begin to seem as if the problem were coming up less often (it never had come up 100% of the time... more like 6 or 7 times out of 10). I told my Advisor about this, and also that it never came up under Windows. I asked him on two occasions why the engineers couldn't just make OS X do whatever it was that Windows did to wake the machine from sleep mode. He never commented on that. In fact he never did answer with more than "I'll let the engineers know."

So that brings us up to July 2011. The static issue was happening infrequently enough now (maybe 2 or 3 times out of 10) that I was getting lazy about it. My advisor and I hadn't communicated since January. I began to wonder if this snappy new major release they call Lion might fix the problem once and for all! I shelled out my $30 and dowloaded/installed it.

Much to my chagrin, the static problem has come back worse than ever, at a rate of 8 or 9 times out of 10.

Not only that, but while it only happened on wake from sleep before, it now happens about half the time when changing the screen resolution.

Not only that, but my email of woe to my Advisor got kicked back by his server: not a valid email address. Well dang... it used to be...

So now what? Well, I'm back here in this thread, for one thing. For what it's worth, I did buy a 2-year extended warranty on the machine that's good for another year. Can "the engineers" wait it out? We shall see...

I have the same issue with mi Mac Pro Mid 2010 (Ati 5870 3 Dell display, 2x24 Ultrasharp 2008 and 1x30 Dell Ultrasharp 2011) conected with Mac Dual link adapters, Cable dual link Dvi and directly Minidisplay port to display port cable... In Lion 10.7.1 static noise appears. Less "ios-arize" and more "optimized" is a shame that in 2011 with expensive apple computer we have these bugs, Hardware work well, in windows all works like a charm no static noise!, no grey wallpapers.... Who are creating display drivers? novices? we had this bug for more than 1 year!, Apple need solve this inmediately!

Does anyone know if this is resolved by buying an Apple Display? I've got a Samsung 305T, the screen goes fuzzy every day at least a few times and requires the monitor to be powered off for a few seconds. Sometimes it goes away but comes right back. Usually at most 3 times until the next day. It's happened to me since I've got my mac pro Mid 2010. I've been looking at this thread for a year now and am super annoyed that there is no fix for this. It's just silly for the dollars spent. My Linux system is seeing more use because of this issue annoying me. I'm stuck on mac so I need to know if switching the display will help. Argh.

The problem is in firmware of Apple Mini display to dvi Dual Link adaptor, i had my adaptor with firmware version 1.01 then i call to applecare to replace this adaptor with old firmare by a new adaptor with the last version of firmware 1.03 and all my problems with static are gone. See this apple article http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3232?viewlocale=es_ES i dont found the english version (is very strange the article in english was there a moth ago the name of the article is ts3232) search it in google cache

Thanks edenexposito, I'm not using a Apple Mini display to dvi Dual Link adaptor on the back of my ATI 5770 in my Mac Pro mid 2010. I guess I could buy one and upgrade the firmware? Or make apple do that for me? It would be cheaper than buying an apple display at least.

Thanks edenexposito, I'm not using an Apple Mini display to dvi Dual Link adaptor on the back of my ATI 5770 in my Mac Pro mid 2010. It's a straight DVI connection. Perhaps there is firmware for the card itself? I guess I could buy an Apple Mini display to dvi Dual Link adaptor and upgrade the firmware? Or make apple do that for me? It would be cheaper than buying an apple display at least. I guess there is no guarantee that buying an apple display would fix the problem anyway if you are uisng an Apple Cinima Display!

I was able to successfully get rid of the colored snow problem on my Mac Mini and 47" Olevia LCD TV. Over a year long period I searched various message boards, tried software updates, all kinds of cables, HDMI and DVI adapters but nothing worked. Finally, about two months ago I just gave up and bought the HDMI Detective Plus. I may have even read about it on this message board. I use this together with a generic Apple-to-HDMI adapter cable and it just works. I resisted buying anything for so long because in principle I shouldn't have to spend $90 when a free software patch should really be all that is necessary to fix the problem. But I was already way too annoyed to spend any more time on this problem. Also, it was worse in my case because the colored snow problem would happen at any moment, not just when waking from sleep. So I bought this device and I haven't had the colored snow issue return, not even once. All it does is save the EDID information for the TV it is connected to. So I guess that means my problem was that the EDID information was becoming corrupted at some point? I guess I don't know and I don't care at this point. All I can say is that the problem is gone. I don't know if this will work for everyone but I thought at least one person could give it a try and report back if it works. At the very least, you should be able to return it if it doesn't work.

jonk75 wrote:

All it does is save the EDID information for the TV it is connected to. So I guess that means my problem was that the EDID information was becoming corrupted at some point?

Nope it has nothing to do with EDID and everything to do with HDCP. The Gefen HDMI Detective Plus does not support HDCP so the Mac disables HDCP. It would be the same as if you plugged the Mac into an older DVI display that did not support HDCP.

edenexposito, I'm not using the mini-display port either. Also, the firmware theory seems to be contradicted by the fact that after more than two years with this Mac Pro early 2009, I haven't had the problem even once when the computer was running under Windows XP or Windows 7. Nor have I seen any reports that it does. (I spend about half my time on the machine using Windows with Boot Camp.)

The conclusion seems inescapable that the problem is somewhere in the OS X video driver software, and that it wouldn't be hard to fix if one could just get someone at Apple to pay attention to it.

Still no progress on that front though. It's just an annoyance really... for me the snow thing only happens when I'm waking the computer from sleep, and it nearly always corrects itself if I let it sit for about half a minute. FWIW, the fastest way I've found to restore the display is to shut off the video signal with Control-Shift-Disk Eject, and then clicking the mouse to turn it on again. It takes about 5 seconds, and it hasn't failed me yet.

Shame though that such a pretty (and pricy) computing environment is marred by such a stupid thing.

Aric, it seems you are right about the HDMI Detective disables HDCP. By default, HDCP is disabled. But it does have an HDCP pass-through mode, which can be enabled by setting dipswitch 4. I tried enabling HDCP pass-through mode the other night and the colored snow problem returned within minutes. It's interesting that they (Gefen) promote the HDMI Detective as an EDID-saving device and almost hide the fact that it disables HDCP.

Having the same problem on a brand new AOC monitor and MBA 13". Monitor would display fuzz occasionally on a clean boot as well as after waking up from sleep.

From the research I've done over on Audio Video forums, people were indicating the same issues when connecting Apple products running OSX Lion to video scalers and switching hardware. The white snow that you see is the encrypted HDCP data not being decrypted properly. Basically the Apple hardware detects an HDCP compliant video device, but the handshake is not happening correctly.

I went back to Amazon and looked at the cable (not adapter) that I purchased. I purchased a cable for a nice clean look, so I wouldn't have an adapter dongle hanging off the side of the laptop. Had I read the one negative review about the cableI would have learned that the Apple hardware with the Thunderbolt interface and OSX Lion does not work with this cable. Now my knee jerk reaction is that there shouldn't be a difference between a mini DP (Thunderbolt) to HDMI cable versus an adapter. Well, according to the review, there is and this cable "cannot be tested for compliance or interoperability using the HDMI CTS" and "cannot be assured that products using this cable will work as expected". Furthermore, "HDMI licensing has informed select manufacturers of DisplayPort and Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cables of the non-compliance status of their products, but did not ask for a recall yet".

I have borrowed an adapter from elsewhere and hope this will resolve the problem. I will update this post when I confirm or deny this. I suppose that there is a possibility that even my borrowed adapter may have the same issue, but we'll see. I did read in a thread somewhere on Apple discussion boards that somebody had this issue even with a genuine apple adapter, so that doesn't make much sense. Maybe it is an older one that does not meet HDMI/HDCP specifications? I know others mentioned using appliances that can emulate a non HDCP compliant display (which also helps keep the HDMI link alive) to strip out the HDCP signal and thus resolve the issue, however those devices can be costly. I'm wondering if there are a bunch of cables and adapters that just simply have issues like this?

Question - how many of us are using "cables" versus "adapters" where you have to supply your own HDMI or DVI-D cable? Are they new/old, name brand or off brand?

I hope this all works out when I get home and will update this post as I find more information. Cross your fingers for me!