MBP13‘3 and External Monitor Problem (screen goes pink/ laptop hangs)

@mathieu
What insurance is it? Do share...

It's an insurance offered by my local store in Belgium (www.fnac.be)
I'm paying 300€ (about 400$) for a 3-year insurance.

Are there any other forum or discussion on this topic? I am trying to build up a case when I revisit the Apple store.

I am a little surprise how little people are on this topic, consider it sounds like it is affect every MBP 13' out there.

This problem seems to exhibit itself only under specific circumstances. All these conditions need to apply to cause the freeze/crash:

1. MBP 13" (mid 2010)
2. External monitor AND internal monitor both used.
3. External USB keyboard (Apple in my case).

External USB mouse doesn't seem to have an affect.

As above but with laptop lid closed to shutdown internal monitor does not crash.

Internal and external monitors but no external keyboard does not crash.

There are surely more variables as well (e.g., type/brand of monitor).

We have six of these MBPs all purchased at the same time. The three different ones I've tested this with all exhibit the same symptoms.

It has nothing to do with an attached USB-keyboard. I don't have one attached and i have this problem, too.
My reseller tested the MacBook for three days and didn't have any issues (attached to an external monitor via DVI. I use the Apple Mini Display Port to VGA-Adapter on an Optoma-Beamer @ 1280x720). So i thought it could have to do with the transformation of the signal from digital to analogue and bought a Mini Display Port to HDMI-Adapter and a HDMI-cable. After 12 minutes watching a DVD i had the next freeze.
@KennyLiu
The only other thread i found is at a german forum: http://www.mactechnews.de/forum/thread.html?id=289008&page=3
I hope Apple is resolving this annoying issue soon.

this thread has 18,000 views but maybe people don't take the time to post after they read up on the issue.

Has anyone tried mirrored mode to check if it happens there too?

I've yet to read a comment from anyone saying they had their logic board replaced and continued to have problems. A few people have gotten the whole computer replaced and still had problems, but others did not. Of course even if it is a hardware defect, it's possible to replace one bad computer with another.

After having my logic board replaced, I've now used my computer for 3 and half weeks without problems. I'm fairly confident now that it has actually been fixed.

I have experienced the same problem with my new (one week old) 13 inch MBP. Attaching to an external monitor causes the MBP to crash.

I've tested this on two different monitors: 19" Samsung SyncMaster 193P @ 1280 x 1024; and 19" ViewSonic @ 1680 x 1250; both connected to DVI with DVI adapter purchased from Apple with the computer; using bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Both monitors caused the machine to hang when using and when not using external mouse and keyboard. Only solution was hard shutdown.

Called Apple Care and they sent me into the local Apple store. Apple store could not reproduce the problem, so they authorized me to return MBP for a replacement. I will try that, but from this group of postings, it seems unlikely that that will solve the problem.

I have been trying the suggestion of closing the lid and running just the external monitor, with bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I've been doing that for about one hour and so far no crashes.

Quite a mystery.

Last night i watched a TV episode using EYE TV in mirrored mode. No problem for more than one hour. This morning i talked to Applecare and they told me to trash screensharing.plist and windowserver.plist and perform a SMC reset. Personally i don' t think this will work but i will do it anyway so nobody can say i didn't try it. If the problem persists i will call Apple tomorrow again.

Same problem. I live in Russia. I bought me MacBook Pro in June in San Diego, CA. Now I decided to plug in external display and after about a half an hour both screen became white. I've tried DVI Samsung SyncMaster 971P and VGA ProView 700P. All the same hour or half - all hangs. But today I've set refresh rate of my ProView 75Hz instead of 60Hz. It works for me for 3 hours. I hope it will solve my problem for now.
But I will need to connect my MacBook to projectors and another displays. Hope Apple will find solution.

I just wanted to chime in here. I've had the external monitor issue with my 15" Macbook Pro, Core i7 2.66ghz, 4gb of ram that I purchased in late July. My computer was a refurbished model, that I think was produced sometime in spring. When connected to my 21" Dell at work, it's fine for about 10 to 20 minutes, and then both screens go black. Nothing revives the computer other than holding down the power button to hard reboot it. I've tried everything from closing the computer to unplugging the adapter and just waiting for it to come back. Twice I've been to the genius bar, and though I have saved every single crash report, and they agreed they could see something going on that wasn't right, when I took it in to be serviced (the genius bar guy said it would probably be a logic board replacement) they could not replicate it.

At this point, I'm starting to wonder if this might actually have more to do with a faulty display port adapter than the computer. With out the display port adapter, I've only crashed in twice; once zooming in using the track pad while in Photoshop CS4, and once while playing HalfLife 2 through steam. I will be taking my computer in again to the genius bar, and will continue to do it until they resolve this issue. This time I'm going to get them to use my mini-displayport adapter (it's display port to DVI by the way) to see if they can replicate it and maybe get a replacement. I don't know if anyone else has looked into replacing the adapter to see if that resolves the issue; that's what I'm going to try to do. I'll post back to let you guys know if that resolves anything.

i think the problem goes beyond the adapter.
i´ve tried 3 adapter and every single one let my system freeze.

my apple service partner tested my mbp by attaching a imac 27" as external screen. they couldn`t reproduce the issue. but in this case, its connected via mini display to mini display port.

so what does this say?
i think the mini display port itself is working fine, the problem is maybe connected with the use of dvi/vga adapter.
i ordered a minidisplay to male dvi cable to use it without adapter. this is probably my last idea to fix the problem.

by the way; we all recognized that everything works fine with a external screen if we close the mbp. so this should proof that it cannot be a hardware issue.

Thanks for the reply and clarification with the adapter. My coworker has a Macbook Pro hooked up to pretty much the same monitor, the same way, with no issues. Granted it's about a year older than mine, but she's on the same version of the OS. So that had me thinking it was more of a hardware issue. But from what you're saying, it seems a consensus that this really is more on the software side of things.

They did the same thing when I brought my computer in. Connected it to the 27" Apple Display, and it was fine the whole time. I didn't think about the fact that they weren't actually using a displayport adapter. Where did you order a minidisplay to male dvi cable? i would be interested in looking into those. Other than replacing the logic board, or switching out the computer entirely, has anybody else had an Apple technician try to address this problem in any other way?

Hi,
I've been experiencing the same type of problems with my new MBP 13.3 connected to a VGA display through the MiniDisplay adapter. Before I used the previous version of the MacBook 13' (aluminium case but not Pro), and never had the problem.

Can anybody tell if they migrated from an previous MB or did they have complete clean install ?
Last weekend, i did a complete clean (re-)install, reset the SMC and the problem did not reoccur (yet)...