Screen won't turn on after sleep for newest macbook pro (Feb 26 2011)

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Screen won't turn on after sleep for newest macbook pro (Feb 26 2011)

Hi!

I just bought the 13' Macbook Pro with an 2.7GHz dual-core i7 processor and 500GB of space, the $1500 model. I am having a problem with the screen and I am wondering if I should be worried about it or if anyone else has noticed it. If it continues, I will have to take it into the store and see if I can get it fixed.

My macbooks screen will not turn on after it falls asleep for a long period of time. The first night I had this computer, it was playing music and I turned the screen brightness all the way down/off and then I fell asleep. The energy settings were set so that the computer would fall asleep after 20 minutes. Pathfinder, F.lux and iTunes were the only application running at the time. When I woke up the next morning, the light on the computer's side indicating it was asleep was slowly fading in and out (as expected). I hit some keys on the keyboard and the keyboards backlighting turned on after a few seconds.

But the screen did not turn on. I tried adjusting the screen brightness on the keyboard and nothing happened. After a few minutes, I held down the power button and heard the computer turn off. I turned the computer back on, AND THE SCREEN LOOKED VERY STRANGE. I could see part of iTunes fragmented/segmented into 5 or 6 sections across the screen. There were also strange lines going across the screen. It looked kind of like a leftover image of iTunes that could be solved with a screen refresh. I turned off my computer again and turned it back on about two more times, and then the screen would simple just not turn on.

As I was packing up to go to the Apple Store, I tried one more time to turn my computer on and the screen was working fine. This was yesterday, and for the rest of the day the computer seemed to work fine. However, I don't think I let my computer fall asleep all day yesterday because I was using it so much.

Basically the same thing happened this morning when I woke up, except to a lesser degree. My computers screen was unresponsive after keyboard input, but I was able to get music to play from my speakers. I restarted it and it seems to be working fine. I didn't see the screen do that weird fragmentation thing this time.

I think something about the sleep function is interfering with my computer's screen. Or perhaps Pathfinder or F.lux have something to do with it. F.lux, by the way, is a application that turns the screen a dark yellowish at night to help your eyes. But I have friends that use this application and I myself have used it for a while and we have never had this problem. Then again, none of them have a 13 inch with an i7.

Does anyone know about this problem and have advice that would save me a trip to the Apple store?

thanks!

13' Macbook Pro, 2.7GHz dual-core i7, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Feb 26, 2011 8:39 AM

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Answer 1

Tuttle

Level 7

29,541 points

Feb 26, 2011 9:31 AM in response to jahuda

Why don't you get rid of F.lux and see what happens. You need to start ruling software issues out first, then move on to testing hardware.

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Answer 2

Feb 26, 2011 9:33 AM in response to jahuda

I'm having the exact same issue on my brand new 17" quad core i7. If I close the lid to sleep, it wakes up just fine. If I let the machine sleep due to inactivity, it will not wake up. The keyboard backlight comes on, but the screen remains black. After a forced restart the gray screen appears fragmented and garbled, but it boots without issue. This is really annoying on a $2400+ computer.

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Answer 3

jahuda Author

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Feb 26, 2011 10:35 AM in response to jahuda

@ChrisVasquez glad to see that someone else is also having this issue and it's not just me. the way you described it sounds just about right.

@Tuttle i will delete F.lux tonight and see what happens, but I don't think that's the issue. The computer screen would not turn on even after multiple restarts, which doesn't sound like a software problem to me, but I could be wrong. I'll let you know how it goes.

Also, i tried repairing disk permissions and a lot of Java stuf needed to be repaired, but not much else. I don't know if disk permissions will play into this or not though.

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Answer 4

Mar 8, 2011 1:38 AM in response to jahuda

Bump. I'm having this same problem with my MBP as well.

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Answer 5

taavo

Level 1

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Mar 9, 2011 6:37 AM in response to jahuda

This has happened to me twice in the brief time I've had my MBP. Symptoms are as follows:

1) I leave the machine idle, open, and plugged in at the end of the day, so it should go to sleep due to energy saver settings

2) I return in the morning and after I wake up the machine the following things are going on:

- External display is moderately garbled, as though video memory is corrupted. Internal display is either off or, after it eventually wakes up too, far more garbled.

- The clock is stuck at some time in the middle of the night. Eventually it updated to the current time, but got stuck again shortly after.

- The popup saying none of my preferred wireless networks are available is displayed. (For the record, this isn't the case; seems like the airport hardware must be confused.)

- Mouse and keyboard mostly work, although anything displayed on the screen may end up garbled. Machine responds as though it's under extremely high CPU load, or VM paging. I tried putting the machine to sleep via the apple menu, in the hopes that when it woke up it would recover, but when it woke up it was even worse and the fan started blowing furiously. Eventually both screens went blue, and the machine stopped responding.

- I ssh'd in and everything looked normal, as far as I could tell from the horrible ssh app I downloaded on my iPhone. "sudo shutdown -r now" failed to shut down the machine, however.

Hopefully Apple can hook us up with a firmware update... otherwise we're all going to have to get new logic boards.

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Answer 6

Mar 9, 2011 8:25 AM in response to jahuda

I'm having similar issues, but my screen wakes up and sticks to a blue screen (and I end up having to restart) or it comes back on with the wrong resolution.

Would this have anything to do with the automatic graphics switching? I'm going to turn it off to see if this helps.

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Answer 7

taavo

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Mar 10, 2011 10:46 AM in response to jahuda

Bad news and good news. The bad news is that it happened again this morning. The good news is that I finally found something interesting in the console log, at the exact second my clock is stuck when the machine is failing to wake from sleep:

3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel WaitForStamp: Overflowed waiting for stamp 0x32b5d on Blit ring: called from wait for blt buffer (2D blt)
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel timestamp = 0x32b5c
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel ** Debug info for apparent hang in Blit graphics engine **
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel ring head = 0x000013b0, wrap count = 0x 0
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel ring tail = 0x00001f58 ring control = 0x00003401 enabled, auto report disabled, not waiting, semaphore is waiting, length = 0x004 4KB pages
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel timestamps = 0x32b5c
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel Semaphore register values:
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel VRSYNC: (0x12044) = 0x0
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel BRSYNC: (0x22040) = 0x0
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel RVSYNC: (0x 2040) = 0x0
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel BVSYNC: (0x22044) = 0x0
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel RBSYNC: (0x 2044) = 0x0
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel VBSYNC: (0x12040) = 0x0
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel trying to clear semaphore wait on Blit ring
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel After attempt to clear semaphor wait = 0x00003001 no longer waiting
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel kIPEHR: 0x1800001
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel kINSTDONE: 0xffffffff
3/10/11 7:33:53 AM kernel kINSTDONE_1: 0x3fffffff

From when the problem apparently starts (some point in the night while my machine is idle and supposedly asleep) until when I discover it and reboot the machine, I get dozens or hundreds of the above messages. Now somebody just needs to figure out what that means and stop it from happening...

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Answer 8

hallio

Level 1

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Mar 10, 2011 1:20 PM in response to taavo

I'm having a similar issue with a 2011 15" MBP, 2ghz Core i7 model. Left to sleep and then it's impossible to wake it up without forcing it to shut down. Sometimes I get the screen 'garbage', and sometimes not.

An interesting fragment from the log file at about the time it would have gone to sleep :

10/03/2011 20:32:57 kernel ** Debug info for apparent hang in Main graphics engine **

which doesn't sound good!

I've turned off the automatic graphics switching for now to see if that helps, which obviously isn't ideal but may do until there's a fix / patch / solution.

Steve

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Answer 9

taavo

Level 1

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Mar 10, 2011 8:53 PM in response to jahuda

I called Apple support today, and since the machine is less than two weeks old (they only started selling them two weeks from tomorrow), they suggested just swapping it for a brand new identical machine. I did so. Fingers crossed the new one wakes up normally in the morning.

The guy in the apple store, hearing of my problem, asked if I'd used the Migration Assistant to move my data from my old computer. I had. He said this can sometimes migrate old cruft which causes problems on the new machine. Something to keep an eye on.

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Answer 10

Mar 10, 2011 9:03 PM in response to jahuda

I did an SMC/PRAM reset and turned off automatic graphics switching and I haven't had the problem reoccur so far.

As taavo/Apple store mentioned, I did do a Time Machine restore using Migration Assistant from a 2008 MBP. Since doing the reset, the computer runs much quicker as well. Boot up times and application launching is super quick.

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Answer 11

kic

Level 1

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Mar 11, 2011 2:17 PM in response to iinviktus

Hi,

I am having the same problem with my 2011 17" MBP. It seems to sleep after a short idle time on battery, then it does wake up again when I come back but does not turn on the screen. Keyboard is illuminated, but I cannot see anything anymore.

I do NOT think this is restore related. I, too, transferred my data from my old MBP, but I remember that this happened just after unpacking it the first time and PREPARING to transfer the data - nothing had happened up to this moment, it simply did not turn on the display anymore.

What I can say is that it only seems to happen when it goes to sleep, not when it only darkens the screen. When I am on power supply I never let it go to sleep, but I often find a dark screen that always comes back to life on a key press. On battery, though, it goes to sleep - and during wake up it does not switch the display on.

I am wondering if they can exchange my online ordered MBP into another one in the Munich store since I am using a US keyboard :/

Still hoping they will say it is firmware related only.

Torben

PS: SMC reset does not help.

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Answer 12

Mar 13, 2011 3:02 PM in response to taavo

We are seeing pretty much the same behaviour on both our new MBPs.

"3/13/11 5:09:36 PM kernel ring tail = 0x00003c28 ring control = 0x00003801 enabled, auto report disabled, waiting, semaphore not waiting, length = 0x004 4KB pages"

One MBP had been set using the Migration Assistant, but the other has had all applications installed clean.

I noticed that just prior to the endless cycle of kernel messages there is a wake message:

3/13/11 5:09:13 PM kernel Wake reason = RTC
3/13/11 5:09:13 PM configd[15] network configuration changed.
3/13/11 5:09:13 PM kernel RTC: maintenance alarm 2011/3/13 21:09:12, sleep 2011/3/13 19:09:22
3/13/11 5:09:13 PM kernel System Wake
3/13/11 5:09:13 PM kernel Previous Sleep Cause: 5

Two hours prior to this, there's SafeSleep and hibernate messages before it actually sleeps.

I seem to remember that there was a similar hibernate and wake problem with new MBPs several years ago.

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Answer 13

Mar 14, 2011 10:55 AM in response to jahuda

My new macbook pro has the same issue. It happens occasionally when I unplug the external display and let the display go to sleep (machine is still on). Most of the time it will wake up, but sometimes it won't.

If I try to plug in external display, let the display sleep, unplug, sleep, plug, sleep, and so on. Most likely, the display won't wake up after a few tries.

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Answer 14

Mar 14, 2011 12:59 PM in response to Notary Sojak

Notary Sojak wrote:

I noticed that just prior to the endless cycle of kernel messages there is a wake message:

3/13/11 5:09:13 PM kernel Wake reason = RTC
3/13/11 5:09:13 PM configd[15] network configuration changed.
....

Those are actually related to "Wake for Ethernet Access" (or similar) in Energy/Power Settings. Probably nothing to do with the sleep/wake issues.

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Answer 15

Mar 14, 2011 3:19 PM in response to jahuda

Sounds like the same issue I have on a top-end 15", with the better graphics card. Wake from sleep didn't work, and that same grey fragmented image appeared at some stage (I'll pay more attention next time). To me this looks like a graphics card driver issue, I've seen the same sort of crazy screen stuff on other computers which had non-properly-functioning video card drivers. Hopefully it'll be a simple software update fix.

I'll test it a few times, putting it to sleep in different ways.
Cheers, A.

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