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

FishNYC22 wrote:
Whats odd is the screenshot shows that I have an i3/i5 machine but I actually got the i7 15". But they have the speed right (2.66). Probably doesn't matter anyway.

Yeah... don't worry about this.

I'm not sure I understand what it means that all blocks of ram in your 13" is writable. From how fast those errors were adding up I'd think NONE of my blocks were writeable. What does that mean?

So this is referring to the link/post you found. The issue at hand was that Memtest would always discover errors in a very small region of the DIMM's overall addressable memory. The reason was a bug in the EFI. Normally, a bad DIMM will produce errors in multiple address blocks and will be random between passes. Errors will get thrown in lots of places, not just one block of memory.

However, because I was able to get memtest to run for multiple passes w/o errors, I have to believe this memtest related bug (in the post you linked to) has been resolved. We would need a little more information on the particular errors your machine is throwing to be certain, but at this point if memtest is throwing errors, I'm inclined to think there is a problem with your machine moreso than a bug in the diagnostic utility.

Message was edited by: pzane

Ok I wish I'd seen this post sooner.
I bought my 13.3 MBP in October and I have two cables for it one mini-display port to VGA, the other to HDMI connected to a 19 philips 190CW monitor (DVI) or my LG Flatron 19".
crashed within the first few days. Screen went on both external and laptop, but laptop seems to be working fine. I also notice that this only really happens when I'm reading stuff on the laptop. (Think as the mbp powers down the issue rears it's ugly head) It never happened all the time Whilst I was running Eclipse on the external monitor with 2 browsers or when it's under similar heavy load activity.
My guess is the hybridisation, as it tries to switch to the low powered GPU.
I will take mine in to the apple store and see what they say. In the mean time I will try to replicate the issue.

*We are saved!!!*

*Apple just posted this:*

* http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1331*

So was it actually a software problem? I'll leave my computer on the external monitor all weekend to verify that it's fixed

No, alas, we're not saved. This is a fix for a different, much more minor, problem, and was posted by Apple last January.

Curious that the post date is listed as January 18, 2010. This is clearly the new firmware, though, because it also states that OS X 10.6.5 is required.

Part of me wants to say about effing time; the other part says yippee I won't have to take the six MBPs my company bought in for repair!

Assuming this is really a fix, of course.

Sweet... I will update tonight and report back.

EFI v2.0 is definitely the latest version and that release date must be a mistake. It also clearly says "for Mid 2010" models.

Agree, the date is not consistent with the model and version numbers. This could not be published in jan-2010.

Last week i posted that i would be trying to test with external monitors after upgrading my memory to 8 GB non-apple.

It seemed to work, but last monday my MBP went purple again, so this was only delaying the error as far as i understand.

The conclusion of the guys doing memtest was that the problem wasnt the memory it self but more like the memory controller handling the memory.

I hope this update bring a solution to this, extremely annoying, problem.

I would like to hear your results in a couple of days/weeks after doing the update.

Um but I'm on a 15" MBP.. ***????????? !!!!!!!

The EFI 2.0 didn't solve it for me.

Installed it, rebooted, connected the external monitor and in less that 5 minutes I had a hang.
The color was different though, it was very close to the colors in my wallpaper.

Right, updated to EPI 2.0 but still got the pink / purple screen after 5 minutes.

As for me. I just updated to EFI 2.0, and it's already been 5 hours I'm working on extended desktop without any hang.

I don't know if it's possibly changing something, but I disabled "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible", "wake for network access" and "automatically reduce brightness before display goes to sleep". Because what I realized is that usually my computer was hanging just before going to sleep.

I'll keep you guys updated...

The person most affected by this problem is on vacation this week so this update came in at a good time to test her machine without being disruptive.

Her problems varied depending on which monitor cable was being used. With a VGA cable that came with our video conferencing system there were only weekly crashes. With the cable that came with the monitor there had been regular hourly crashes.

I installed the firmware update yesterday afternoon and and replaced the original monitor cable. I also left her computer running all night (not normal procedure). Now more than 20 hours later and with the less-robust monitor cable the computer is still functioning with no problems.

This is definitely an improvement and hopefully a permanent fix for us.

jdlink wrote:
... I also left her computer running all night (not normal procedure). Now more than 20 hours later and with the less-robust monitor cable the computer is still functioning with no problems.

Not 100% sure, but I believe the computer will need to be under at least minimal stress to reproduce the error. I often wonder about taking it to the Genius Bar and how they haven't been able to reproduce the problem for most posters on this thread.

Before the EFI update it was not necessary to stress the computer for it to crash with this particular monitor/cable combination. In any case, today it has been used to access email while our co-worker is away--still running strong after more than 24 hours.

Happy to report that I uploaded the firmware update as soon as I saw it and I've been running with an external Viewsonic 19" monitor connected via Apple mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter and with the internal monitor for seven and a half hours. Best result ever before this update was maybe 4 hours before a crash! So I am pleased . . . so far. I plan to leave everything running all night long and I'll report the results tomorrow. Wish me luck . . .