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

I'm having the same problem, my MBP 13'3 hangs with a pink screen while connected to the external monitor, but I'm using the DVI adapter.

Same problem here. Worked fine last week with a VGA beamer, but today with a monitor (with more pix) it continued to crash every 30-60 minutes or so. Screens turn gray or one colour. I will try DVI tomorrow, if I can find a cable.

Got anybody info from Apple about this issue?

13" MacBook Pro, 2010 model.

I've had this happen twice now with a brand new 13" MacBook Pro, 2010 model.

Both times it has happened I've had an external display connected. The external display turns grey, the internal display turned purple once, dark green another time.

The second time it happened I tried using SSH to connect to the computer. Worked fine, the computer was totally responsive. I was able to reboot the computer from the command line to get it back to normal. So it seems to be a display issue alone.

I'm currently using 10.6.3—I'm about to install 10.6.4 now. I don't know if that will make any difference, but I do get the feeling it's a software or firmware issue rather than a hardware defect. If 10.6.4 doesn't help I guess I'll be taking it in to Apple.

----

Here's another person with what sounds like the same issue: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2441287

Worth noting: at one point I tried overtaxing my computer to force the issue to happen. Opened probably 40-50 apps, processed a 4GB file in Photoshop, etc. Nothing happened. For me at least, I'm confident it's not an issue of overheating or anything. I think both times it happened I was just doing light work like using Safari, browsing files in Finder, etc.

Message was edited by: robotspacer

Happened again. (I did not get a chance to install 10.6.4 yet.) Grey external display, purple built-in display. This time I was NOT able to log in via SSH. However I was in the middle of copying some files when it froze, and those files finished copying successfully, so some things were still running normally after the freeze.

Another thing I don't think I mentioned: I have used this computer quite a bit now (about ten days) without a display connected and it works flawlessly, no freezes at all. I've only used it about two days with a display connected and it has "frozen" three times now.

Mine is also brand new, only with an SSD, not that I think it matters.

And today it happened again while talking in skype and the call kept working, so seems to be display only.

And I could get it to almost shutdown, by pressing the power button and then enter, but it was taking some time and I ended up holding the power button down to force it to shutdown.

I tried it again, with DVI (instead of VGA). And it did lockup again. Like the others, gray external screen slight pinkish/coloured builtin screen.

Tried with another VGA monitor, an older one, and another hang.

Tried it at home, also VGA, and there it worked. All screens are DELL, though the screens with a 'hang' are (from the top of my head) 1280x1024 and the one at home, which seems to work fine is 1680x1050 pixels.

It also seemed to work with a 1024x768 beamer.

What are the resolutions you are seeing crashes?

- Marc

I'm seeing it with my DVI Samsung monitor at 1680x1500.

It used to work well with my previous 15'' 2.66 MBP (from late 2009)

I have the same problem with an I7 core 15" macbook pro. Seems to be associated with the mini display port as I never had this problem with my old macbook pro. I can connect and it will work well for a while then freezes. No way to escape from the freeze except to power button shut down.

I have the same problem (computer crashes often while running two screens). However,I have found that the problem is not with the actual external monitor or the connection to it. I have been running my external monitor with the notebook closed (ie. only one screen at a time) and it never crashes.

Could somebody else test this to confirm?

I believe there is a problem with using multiple monitors simultaneously as opposed to a problem associated purely with running an external monitor. Next, I will try running it in mirrored mode, as opposed to extended desktop.

I would love to find a resolution to this issue, as having an extended desktop is very useful.

watching this thread for a resolution - hopefully soon - as i am about to purchase the VGA adapter for an external monitor too.

Hey all
Just got a 17" i7 MBP a few weeks ago, anxious of all the spinning beachball freezes people have reported in the Apple forums. Thankfully, I have none of these problems, however, I have a problem that's just as annoying.

I have my laptop connected to an Eizo 24" Widescreen via a display port to DVI adapter, using the extended desktop functionality. I started fine, and I have pretty much the external monitor connected 90% of the time. But then after a few days (and this happens now 2-5 times ever day), the screens will go black, once entering sleep mode for the screens only, and I can't wake them up, only do a hard reboot via the power button. it's really annoying, as I can't leave the monitor plugged in, while I go do other stuff. When the MBP is on it's own, there's no problem.

Also, sometimes when starting up, a few seconds into the desktop showing, I get severe graphics corruption, all kind of colours on both monitors, and I can only o a hard reboot to recover it. No problem as well when only using the MBP without the external monitor.

The only good thing about these problems are that wen I push the machine hard (I am a graphic designer, so it get's pushed to max maybe 5 hours a day), there's no problems what so ever, it's like it's more tend to crash when cold. No problems during intense gaming as well.

I run solely on the geforce card, as I have read a lot of problems are due to the switching of cards.

Anyway, just wanted to chime in, hopefully Apple will deliver a solution for this soon. My old 2007 MBP was rock-solid, and so far this has been the least stable Mac I have owned. Love it still though.

Lars

same problem here, just got my MBP 2 weeks ago..

When i read the above posts, i think there might be some relation to the hybrid nature of MBP mid 2010, as we know, in MBP, there are both Intel and NVidia graphic chipsets, switching themselves for low and high system load respectively. I guess it is the Intel chipset that cause the problem, as the problem only happens when the system is under little load.

I am not quite sure about why this situation happens, perhaps when we have our external display connected, the switching of the graphic chipsets might cause some unfavorable situation..
If we can keep the graphic card under constant load, forcing MBP to use Nvidia chipset instead, perhaps we can avoid the situation..

This theory is not tested however.. someone out here can try and report here..
Let's hope that this is not an hardware fault,, see when apple will release a hotfix..

To me it seems that there are two different issues. One with the new hybrid GPU MacBook Pros and one with the 13" MacBook Pro, which has only one Nvidia GPU.

The 15/17" versions seem to crash/freeze in some situations, besides not always waking from sleep.

The 13" freezes with a blank screen when operating an external monitor in extended desktop mode.

Oh, I overlooked that fact! I thought all 3 models are hybrid..
Let's hope that it's not hardware design fault...

Just purchased a display adaptor and now.. desperate..