No display at all after 10.5.7 update install

Randall ... I am not sure if anyone else checked but I did. I have SmartReporter running on all machines 24/7 and it has showed green all the time (a handy utility see http://www.corecode.at/smartreporter/ - this is better than Disk Utility as it monitors disk condition all the time). Also I verified with disk utility just before and after the upgrade, correcting permissions etc.

Anyway I have now back-graded to 10.5.6 and machine and OS are happy again.

Hi Jack, thanks for your note.

I haven't figured the prob as yet, main priority was to get the system back up and running. From the look of things it seemed to be a combination of something in the mach kernel, the kexts and then the core services that load the window managers, they just weren't talking to each other properly. Changing the kexts to 10.5.6 allowed me to get the grey boot screen at least and then do the full reinstall from scratch.

since then I've had no problems at all. didnt need to reset the pram, anything.
updated to the latest patches (java, airport etc.) and blacklisted 10.5.7 until apple figure this one out.

Well,
I had my Macbook Pro rest for a night without any power source. powered it up this morning, screen is still black.
I now removed the harddrive and put in an empty harddrive . Black screen. Started from Tiger AND Leopard Installation DVD´s, black screen.
I also tried to power up the Macbook Pro yesterday without any drives attached,
so I guess, my problem is not related to OS X filesystem.
I fear, the update blew the NVIDIA Geforce 8600 M GT, could this be possible?
I know they are prone to failure, but exactly while doing an update and not during several days of rendering?
Will take it to a service point on Monday...

Dumb question, because my upgrade to 10.5.7 seemingly worked, and yours didn't -- are you letting your hard-drive or CPU sleep, according to Energy-Saver settings?, because I'm NOT !
But still, in my installation I get a line that mentions something like "NVDHAL50", which is, seemingly different from what 10.5.7 thinks that your graphics chip is.

I checked System Profiler on my MBP 15", and it thinks my graphics set is GeForce 8600M GT, the same one that seems to be indicative of the problem.

Did you notice? -- in the two system logs from this thread, they both seem to be running Parallels ?

Hi gverdian ... OK but continue to be wary. I was also doing fine on 10.5.6 after the backgrade and did about 12 hours of solid work on it. I had used SuperDuper to do a smart update from my pre-crash clone (i.e., it just changes changed files ... including the system files). I was humming along fine on 10.5.6. then figured to be on the safe side with nothing better to do Saturday morning I ran my standard suite of routine maintenance ops from inside 10.5.6 this includes doing things like emptying some caches, resetting pram, resetting SMC ... and WHOOSH ... next power up was back at black scree again. Same story you know all to well. After various failed attempts finally gave up and pulled off my recent disk changes via target drive mode from my little Macbook and am now going to wipe the drive completely and try to reinstall ... I have not decided yet ... maybe I wll reinstall sys 10.4 (what came with my MBP initially) or maybe I will go straight for my Leopard install disk. I may try both --- so stay tuned.

Note I have been working on my MBP via screen emulation mode for the past hour and it works quite well - just no video (internal or external). Recall I am now on 10.5.6 folks....

If this still looks like a mess under 10.4 and 10.5.0 after wiping the disk clean then that narrows things down bit ....

I don't run Windows on my Mac (under either Parallels or VMWare), so I don't know if it is normal for BOTH Parallels and VMWare messages to appear in the system (boot-up) log, as was shown earlier in this thread.

Both of these products appear to be altering kext Extensions under /System/Library/Extensions , and MAY be the cause of the problem with the 10.5.7 update.

Has anyone who IS NOT, or WAS NOT, running Windows also on their Mac, been experiencing this bug ?

null

I've admitted defeat with trying to get the screen back. Having tried PRAM and SMC resets I used VoiceOver to do a format and install using my leopard install dvd on my MacBookPro and I still suffered a black screen. I switched vnc on and in the system profiler it reads I have the same Intel x3100 graphics chip as others mention further up this thread. To me it looks like code was written to the graphics card during the 10.5.7 update.
I've since called AppleCare, chatted it over and they've given me a support ticket.

Message was edited by: CollectedMule

Hi Jack,

I've had some more probs since 2 days ago, which I seemed to have fixed.

Having a fresh install of 10.5.6, I would have the display start overlaying yellow vertical bars on the screen, flicker and then it would freeze. Hard powering down and rebooting sometime worked, the times it didn't the apple logo during the grey screen would have vertical blue bars inside it, then the standard kernel crash error would come up asking you to power down.

This kept happening randomly throughout the day. Thinking about it and managing to salvage a crash dump, I reset the PRAM (still same problems), then did the PRAM as well as the SMC (i noticed such an improvement in speed!) and finally I opened up the ram and swapped the 2x2gb dimms slots.

Since then, I've left it on, powered down numerous time, put to sleep, maxed out the cpu and pushed the mac to see if this would happen again and so far so good.

From an engineering perspective, software should not be allowed to mess up the hardware to this level and it is too much of a coincidence to say all the NVIDIA chips are faulty and just by chance it became faulty when everyone updated to 10.5.7.

I'm guessing, 10.5.7 updated the firmware of the nvidia chip that seriously changed things when talking to the rest of the mac's hardware hence causing all the problems.

Hi gverdian,

hose are interesting developments. I am still stuck with black screens and 10.5.6 . I tried rewritng the xtensions directory (which seemed to bail you out of the 10.5.7 issue) but that did nothing. Still black. Have tried a fresh reload of my cloned 10.5.6. Still black. Managed an overwrite of the system using Apple's 10.5.6 combo install (on what might have been a faulty 10.5.6 system but it seemed to accept it, rewrite the boot caches, and then reboot) ... still black [I am doing this all using the screen mode from my Macbook). I was in fact just about to open up the back and start swapping RAM or putting in my original 2x1GB chips (replaced by 2x2GB hips 7 months ago with no issue). So I am somewhat hopeful that will have some impact. Like you, though, I think the 10.5.7 messed up the (already dodgy?) video card.

I am still tempted to wipe the disk clean and reinstall from scratch but have resisted because, quite honestly, I doubt that will work as I am also convinced it is hardware and associated firmware at this stage. We'll see. As I am working on my little Macbook from my cloned drive I am getting by; if nothing positive happens the rest fo this Sunday with various fix attempts I shall bring it in to my favourite Swiss techy tomorrow (but before I do that I will reload 10.5.7 on the drive otherwise I am not sure Apple will believe that .7 was the original culprit). I'll probably ask them to put in a new NVIDIA card (whatever the latest supported version is) and see what happens ...

I can't believe the hassle for this relatively minor clean-up update while we all were going to wait through the summer for Snow Leopard ...

Ciao,
Jack

PS

Good grief.

Just swapped x 2GB RAM as you did ... still black.

But the most interesting revelation I had was when I ran the system profiler from within the booted (black screen) MBP. (Still spying via screen sharing mode ... at least that was an interesting innovation). All sys profile information came up fine (including diagnostics) but when I clicked on "Graphics/Displays" it turned for a few seconds and then crashed system profiler. It offered up the usual Report option an upon selecting it that also crashed in the middle of "gathering configuration information". Still smacks of hardware/firmware in the nvidia card that gt messed up during upgrade to 10.5.7 ...

So here goes nothing. I am going to run the 10.5.7 combo update again. Maybe it will bring back my video card from the dead 🙂
Jack

Try here...

http://discussions.apple.com/messageview.jspa?messageID=9478638&stqc=true

I seem to have fixed it for my machine (for now at least)

Thanks . I will try that next. You may have seen my other posts above. Never thought of taking out the PRAM battery. I have also though tried (with random success, various coffees, walks in the park, etc) many of these things and once or twice made it to gray screen but never a stable 10.5.7 which you seem to have. I think my NVIDIA chip is now fried as I have not sen light on my MBP for 24 hours now. I, like you, have been doing things vis screen share on a separate clean macbook.

To summarize:
- I innocently upgraded using stand alone delta-installer from 10.5.6 to 10.5.7 . Worked fine until I put it to sleep then powered up as black.
- I had a clone before I did the update so I recovered the system back to 10.5.6 and thought I had gotten away with it but within 12 hours again went black after shutdown. Could not boot. Diagnostics said I could not find any graphics card. Tried all the usual PRAM resets, SMC resets, took out battery, disconnected power, ran off battery without AC, ran off AC without battery, turned off everything overnight and put machine in fridge (believe it or not this used to work 10 years ago), did various dances to various deities. Still black screen . Also took the back off and switched some RAM modules around since that seemed to help one of our friends on this thread. Still black.
- downloaded full 10.5.7 combo and reinstalled (again from armslength via firewire) the 10.5.7 over the 10.5.6 . Same black nightmare. When I did a system profile it said I had different card then I actually have (I have the same NVIDIA one you do but the system said I have the following:
---Intel GMA X3100:
---
--- Chipset Model: GMA X3100
--- Type: Display
--- Bus: Built-In
--- VRAM (Total): 64 MB of Shared System Memory
--- Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
--- Device ID: 0x2a02

---
--- Revision ID: 0x0003
--- Displays:
---Display Connector:
[no displays of course - neither internal or external]

==> So I put the clone of 10.5.6 back on and rebooted in that. Still all black.

==> I am now doing a software update of 10.5.7 using the online delta updater (via Software Update) which is what we are told to hiss at, shun, and trash because of past bad performance but at this stage I think doing this has some entertainment value. Also, this is what most people do even though they are advised not to. I do not expect it to work of course but not being an avid church-goer I had nothing better to do this Sunday (maybe I should go to church and these things would not happen to me). Anyway, assuming it is still black after this (and your after trying your tips in your blog regarding the PRAM battery) I will bring this machine to my Apple tech service guy tomorrow. I plan to ask him to do some quick checks and just swap in a new video card and see what happens ... I and at least on other are convinced the OS upgrade had some hidden firmware update or something in it that messed up the video card...)

Jack near geneva

Hi Jack,

I'm sorry that it hasn't been any help for you! I like the fridge idea, that saved me a few times aswell! 🙂

The only thing I can suggest is to remove the GMA X1300 kexts so it doesn't load them during boot. Also delete the Extensions.mkext file in /System/Library (that'll reload the cache next time you boot and remake the file.)

I don't really know how to force the mac to use only the Nvidia kexts. In tiger all the boot process stuff happened in /etc/rc* similar to linux but that's changed in leopard...

I'm sorry I can't be of much help! If you really have a problem with the nvidia chip, you take it apple, they'll probably just replace the logic board.

G

PS - as predicted the delta update via software update (i.e., not the down loadable stand-alone updater) did not change anything and also still shows GMA X3100 chipset instead of the NVIDIA chipset that is (or rather 'was') in my MBP. Will drop it off at the Apple tech tomorrow and see what they do with this lack of ANY video output gray, blue or otherwise....
J