Gray background after wakeup after lion upgrade?

I can't speak for how it will affect you, Michael, but clearing P-RAM is the first thing I tried, and it didn't work. At all.

While this is more of an annoyance than a real problem, the problem still exists and it's really bothering me that Apple hasn't even acknowledged the problem exists or that anyone from Apple is even reading this. While dinglebat has managed to escalate this, Apple continues to be silent here.

Hey there!

Have the same Problem.

Terminal / killall Dock resets the screen to wallpaper which is the only workaround beside from loggin out

that works for me.

I got a HDMI connection with a Thunderbolt to HDMI Adapter.

The issue happens in Lion through all versions of Lion.

Happens with lid of Macbook Pro open and closed with automatic switching of graphics on and of.

I have been talking to a couple of Apple Representatives over the past 3 months or so. So far I have worked with 5 diffrent people 3 of them Apple Senior advisors, and just recently they have brought in an Engeneer to examine this problem. Some of their suggestions that they originally had for me was to make sure that my dock is not hidden, change the domint screen (screen with the apple symbol at the top), and go into my finder; Go menu at the top; hit optin while in that menu; Libary; Caches; Find all of these and move them to the trash and restart your computer:

Preferences/com.apple.spaces.plist

Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist

Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Preferences/com.apple.dock.db

Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.screensaver.NUMBER.plist

Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.dock.NUMBER.plist

They also had me do a pram reset, this did not acomplish very much, (restart your computer holding this down immediatly: option, command, r, p; hold these down until you hear to chongs (apple start up sound)

We also have tried new adaptors, and monitors, and we also have reinstalled lion, none of these worked for me, but they may for you.

If you would like to get this problem resovled permintly call apple care, and open a case, and point them to this disscusion.

Also if you have not seen it yet, cnet has done a report of this same problem:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57389668-263/os-x-desktop-backgrounds-gray- after-waking-from-sleep/?tag=cnetRiver

So this should be a problem related with the dock?

This problem really *****.

All my windows that are opened on my external monitor also gets pushed back to the main iMac monitor after sleeping and waking back up!

I doubt it's directly related to the dock. I suspect it has to do with the way the "current configuration" is stored when the Mac sleeps and then retrieved when it wakes up. I suspect something is getting messed up in the process. But who really knows?

dinglebat

I am definitely not a technician and not a Mac expert because I have just been using a MacBook Pro for just about one year. However, I have noticed a pattern. I have had three irritating problems with my Mac. One is the one discussed in this thread; the gray screen after wakeup when using two monitors. A second was that my fan stayed on and killed my battery when I had closed my lid and supposed to have put it to sleep, and the third was that my Mac will occassionally (only about 4 times so far) restart when I have left it for a long period of time. I come back to a login screen and everything has to re-open. This is the most serious because I have lost data from this problem. As I looked for solutions for all three, I found suggestions to reset the PRAM. I know this fixed my problem with the fan continuing to run. However, it is more difficult to determine if this temporarily helps with the other two problems or not because they are more random and less often. However, all three are definitely related to when the Mac goes to sleep incorrectly. I suspect that all three problems may have the same root problem.

When I used to own a MacBook Pro, I've had that problem where the computer fan was still going even after I put it in my bag.

I noticed that when I closed the lid, the computer didn't actually go to sleep immediately. There's a couple seconds where the light stays lit on the front of the MBP before it starts flashing (indicating it is in sleep mode). In that period, it may be possible for the computer to still remain awake for whatever reason (i.e. external device keeping it from going to sleep, application doing something weird). From that point on, I just had to wait a couple seconds to make sure it was actually asleep before putting it away.

Unfortunately, I have no suggestions regarding your third problem. Perhaps there is some process that is causing your computer to restart? Check the console logs to see if it may have any information about anything happening around the time it restarts.

Thanks for the reply, but I think my problem was a little more than what you mentioned because my fans were also running non-stop while the computer was awake. Several times I re-started the computer and that seemed to temporarily fix the problem, but after doing a PRAM reset, I have not had the problem again.

I have been reading what everyone has been saying so I decided to do a test on my system myself with my new iMac (Since my other systems only have Snow Leopard on them). This is what I tested on:

2011 iMac 27" with Lion and 12GB of RAM (figure since everyone was doing Macbooks I would hit the iMac)

24" External Monitor connected via Apple Thunderbolt -> DVI Adapter Dongle

SLEEP / WAKE TEST

I slept the computer and woke it over time increments of 1 hour up to 8 hours between waking.

RESULT

No "Gray" screen error over the course of the test. I could not replicate the "Gray" screen.... UNTIL......

I had been doing random tasks on the computer during these sessions, eating up memory to see if that was the issue, to no avail. It wasn't until I had finished the test and began to watch a Netflix movie online that it happened. I then proceeded to try the test again having a netflix movie playing when I put the system to sleep and then waking up. I even enabled and disabled the external monitor and switched resolutions. I also ran Final Cut Pro X and repeated all the tasks and in 85(ish)% of the circumstances, the error occured.

I would ask if anyone out there could try to reproduce my results and see if this happens to you. If anything, it could provide those swanky Apple Engineers with more data on how to lick the problem. But for now, I just kill the Dock in the Activity Monitor to fix them problem.

Hope this helps!

I am pretty shure that this issue is somewhat related to the combination of external monitor and MBP...
I have a late 2011 MBP 2.2 i7 8Gb memory. I use two external monitors: 24'' dell and 24'' NEC 2490wuxi.

Both through DVI adaptor.

All stuff below is done while the MBP lid is closed!

I sometimes experience problems while waking up my MBP being plugged to Dell monitor. (As mentioned above gray background without wallpaper). But what is more useful for app engineers I always have problems with nec. It' quite expensive monitor and that's a kind of weird. Could they just check it out?!

Whe I wake up my MBP and connected to NEC it usually flickers for a long time ...nothing: blue screen: nothing blue screen: nothing : login screen : nothing .. etc. Sometimes I can just enter password and it's ok.. But all windows are messed up and wallpaper is gone. Sometimes (very rarely) wallpaper is in it's place.

Normally I run then "killall Dock" and that's it.

Sometimes I even see that the bottom bar (menu bar with time and spotlight icon) begins to mess up into pixels. It's not properly redrawn and I have to restart the whole system.

Sometimes after 4 to 10 cycles of flickering (mac internal screen, external monitor) I see that an apple on my lid is shining (internal monitor is on)... Ups!.

And more sometimes it runs out of sleep when I just unplug the power adaptor and then plug back ..

All that stuff seems to me a really weird thing, espesially after using windows laptops. There are no such problems at all.

SergeLaste, your problem is more severe than anyone else has posted here (with the NEC monitor). Hopefully, Apple will clear this up soon.

Give the last comment a rest. Windows PCs have many more problems than Apple devices. Also, you are mixing Apples and bicycles with that statement. It makes no sense.

1. In fact everyone (apple sales in my region) are aware of the problem which is obviously exists. I just wanted to give more information (try to reproduce the issue with the late MBP and NEC 2490WUXI2) if anyone from apple reads this thread.

2. Addon: just tried to restart my system while working with external monitor. It stucked on login screen. External monitor showed nothing until I opened the lid and entered password. Is this ok ?

3. reagrding apples and oranges. My point was: I have been using windows'ed laptops for years and I haven't experianced any problems with external monitors.

4. And regarding many more problems that windows PCs have: that's where you are starting to mix apples and oranges )) ... we are not mentioning flash cpu usage on osx, overall RAM consumption (I had to double my osx memory, while on Windows 4Gb seemed to be totally enough), smooothy cleartype or anything like that... That's really makes no sense.

Do you have all the software updates installed?

I've experienced the messed up looking menu bar and dock before on my iMac. There's another discussion by other iMac users who have experienced this problem as well. It usually happens after waking up from sleep. I'm not sure if the problem was fixed with the software updates as I never put my iMac to sleep anymore.

I notice that this behavior is getting worst...

Apart of the gray background...

a lot of times if I restart my mbp with the monitor connected it just get frozen at login... (i have to restart without the monitor connected!)

if I connect the monitor in the middle of the session, i takes up to several minutes to trying to connect... some times it does, some times it get stuck on a loop... turning on and off the monitor...

when succesfully connect, my windows are all disorganized... and some of the icons on the status bar are misplaced...

is it all part of the same problem? if will like writing about a free version 0.9 of a linux based os... and we are talking about one of the most "modern" a most expensive consumer system arround...

Just waked it up after night ... And ups, no wallpaper - just gray background!

NVRAM reset does nothing!

Apple definetely should make switching between monitors fast and reliable! Now it's a one huge bug!