Gray background after wakeup after lion upgrade?

With the lion 10.7.1 update - I don't have this problem anymore. It could be my imagination - but so far I have not seen it after the update.

I should qualify that a little bit more - I had updated my apps - iphoto, keynote, apeture and the the lion update too. I did notice that on my two displays - that the laptop display would keep the lion background instead of an image from the selected background folder. This was a lil weird.

After updating everything - no such problem showed up again.

If this isn't an actual bug in Lion I would suggest you look through your Preferences folder and toss out any that are related to your Screen prefs. Not sure what all might be involved there but it's entirely possible the old prefs are not quite compatible with Lion or have been corrupted.

Keep the files around just in case you need/want to put them back. Moving them out of the Preferences folder shold be enough. Logout (maybe even reboot) and see if that helps....

(sigh) I was wrong... it just went to gray again... 10.7.1 and other updates didn't do a thing at all... I'll take out the screen prefences file (com.apple.desktop.plist) and reboot and see how it goes.

I'm having the same issue, using an external monitor, happens with both MDP->DVI and MDP->HDMI adapters. Seems also plugging the external display out/in brings the background back.

I did a clean install of Lion, so it's not about old (Snow Leopard) preferences.

I'm seeing it too. killing the doc in the activity monitor does restore it.

I'm only seeing this when my new MBA is connected to my new Thunderbolt

It happens randomly.

between this and the weird USB issues with the thunderbolt display I get mad.

Out of interest has anyone ever seen anyone from Apple atleast acknowledge that there is a problem? This does not seem to be an isolated problem and we have all been waitning blinding assuming they will fix it every patch.

I thought we pay these exteme prices for better customer service and products that work great?

I just started getting this problem after the last update (10.7.2). Secondary display goes gray after wakeup or screensaver. The only thing I found to restore the background quickly is to run terminal and use "killall Dock" it's a little faster than rebooting. Apple needs to step it up and confirm this as a legit bug in the OS. I miss my Snow Leopard.

having the same issue here with mbp 13", mac osx 10.7.2 and extrernal 24" display.

also have a strange black line in the menu field. the background switches between grey and black when switching between spaces.

killing the dock process on the terminal solves it, but this bug should be solved as soon as possible!

I think I figured it out. I adjusted the resolution on the secondary screen a few times after killing the dock process (set it back to the proper resolution afterwards). Then I moved the position from left to right to top in the display settings. Looks like the OS overwrote whatever bug was causing the issue. I've had no problems since. Hopefully it stays that way permanantly.

After reading everyones' comments, I'm not sure if this is the right place for my reply. However, if anyone can help, I would appreciate it.

Every now and again I am experiencing a grey wake up login screen. The only way I can explain it is it's like my whole screen has been painted grey and you can't see the login area. However, if I move my mouse side to side, then its like an erase function that removes the grey one little box at a time until the login area is revealed. Has anyone else experienced this.

I recently upgraded to Lion on my 13 inch MBP 2.3 GHz, i5, 4 GB ram.

Thanks all for your help.

I did what darks0ld13r suggested (change resolutions, move positions) and it seems to have worked. I have only had the screensaver come on a couple times so far, but each time when I came back, my background was still there. It was gone every time I came back in the past. Thanks.

Unfortunately, when I came back from lunch, my desktop background on my external monitor was once again gray, so changing resolutions and moving positions did not FIX the problem. It only temporarily fixed the problem. The simplest temporary fix is to open terminal and type killall Dock and everything comes back, but it's very irritating that we have to do this.

My experience is that multiple monitor handling is completely whack in Lion. I am seeing the random gray background after wake, just like many other folks. I am also seeing that when logging in after the screen has locked, the login dialog will appear on the non-primary screen and after loging in my windows will be randomly redistributed among the screens. This is beyond annoying and quickly aproaching unusable. It feels that much worse because it is not what I have come to expect from Apple and this is the state after two updates (i.e. 10.7.2).

Nope. Sorry. It worked that way for at least a dozen trials, but then I just got a gray screen with a mouse click.

But I don't feel bad, because I couldn't possibly explain why such a difference should occur.

Yes, I am running 10.7.2 and am still having the problem. It does not occur everytime I awaken my computer from sleep -- probably about half the time. I will say, however, that it continues to happen virtually every time I awaken the computer using a keyboard stroke, but maybe only 1 time in 10 when I use a mouse click. This has me fascinated.

I suspect, but obviously do not know for sure, that it has something to do with the way the "set up" is written off to disk during sleep and the way it's written back and acted upon. Let's hope they get it fixed in 10.7.3.