Gray background after wakeup after lion upgrade?

Unlike many people in this thread, I only have 1 external monitor (HP w2207) hooked up to my Mac Pro (early 2008). I started getting display degradations a month or so ago, after having had no problems the past 4 years. Checkerboard patterns; could move the mouse but nothing else worked. Recently started getting the gray screen in lieu of normal login screen. Now, no matter what I've tried (not everything in this thread yet), I get to an eventual white screen w/ various distortions and a perpetually spinning beach ball where my mouse cursor is.

I started googling problems w/ my monitor, but after finding my way here, now I don't think it's my monitor at all; rather, a Lion problem (I've only upgraded to Lion in the last 2 months).

If I can ever get back to a normal, working screen, I'll try a few things (looking for latest drivers for my video card, ATI Radeon HD 2600--don't laugh--and my monitor). I'll also try some screensaver & energy saver settings mentioned earlier.

I need to figure out now how to open the terminal and/or activity monitor to kill or quit the dock. I'm typing this all on a friend's iMac (who hasn't had these problems).

I have this problem too. The main difference is that my screen shows a medium blue solid background rather than my wallpaper.

Here are some details just in case they're helpful:

- Machine: Mac Mini 5,1 Mid 2011 (Intel Graphics 3000 512mb)

- RAM: 8gb

- Monitors: 1

- Monitor brand: Dell 24" Model U2410 running 1920x1200

- Connection: HDMI port --> Apple HDMI to DVI connector --> DVI cable --> monitor

- OS: OSX 10.7.4 (11E53)

I have tried all the workarounds below. They do NOT work - I still get a blue background:

- 'killall Dock' run in Terminal

- Activity Monitor, stop Dock process

- System Preferences/Screen Saver/Hot Corners: set up a Hot Corner to put the Display to sleep

- System Preferences/Screen Saver: Turn off 'Use random screen saver'

When I switch to Mission Control, the wallpaper DOES appear. When I exit Mission Control, the blue background returns.

When I use my Hot Corner to show the Desktop, the wallpaper DOES appear. When I exit this mode, the blue background returns.

I am stumped.

So I've been experiencing a similar circumstance for about two months... I use a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 MPB running 10.7.4, with dual monitor set-up (using a Dell SX2210 display).

When it wakes from sleep sometimes the desktop turns grey and/or the resloution is reset to something crazy. The kill-all dock is a little too technical for me, so I found an easy (yet annoying) work-around is to "Turn on Mirroring" and then "Turn off Mirroring" and then reset the resolution to 1080p.

I hope they fix this soon, and I hope this helps the less tech-savvy users out there.

=^..^=

Blue Screen? are you sure you are not on Windows? 🙂 Joking...

If you tryed the workarrounds and they don't work it might be some other problem... I think all this is more related to an error occuring when you have a second monitor connected to a MBP.

I heard about your issue before, something related to the mac mini...

As an update, my problem essentially is that I can't even get to a login screen to try some of the tips in this long thread. I did manage to get to a Terminal window (restart w/ CMD+R held down), though I could barely see it w/ all the screen distortion. I tried the "killall Dock" and it said "Command not found". D'oh!

I've previously reset the PRAM. Wondering if I just need to sweat this out until next month when Mountain Lion comes out, and hopefully resolves the issue.

I should also point out that when the computer was working fine, and I awoke from sleep, it wasn't a gray screen per se, but rather a mostly frozen screen w/ lots of distortion. The mouse moves around but doesn't do anything regardless of where I clicked. When I then restarted (power button), I get the gray screen in lieu of the login screen, which then turns to a whitish screen w/ some artifacts and the spinning beach ball of death for a cursor.

If nothing's changed tonight when I go home, I might try reinstalling Lion (1 of the options when I restarted w/ CMD+R held down), though I wonder how that's going to work when I got it from the App store; I don't have a physical disk.

The only reason I bothered to get Lion (via a short hop to Snow Leopard via free disc) was b/c Mobile Me was going away and I had to switch over to iCloud to keep my email account. Everything worked just fine prior to Lion.

Hey everyone, let make a video of what happens, when you wake your computer up from sleep and it goes to the gray screen. Post it on youtube, call it "Lion gray screen problem" then post the link to that video on here and we will send all of these links to Apple.

Only way I could get to a login screen was restarting in Safe mode. Once I was in, I did a few new things (e.g., no screen saver; in Energy Saver preferences, deselected "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible") along w/ some typical things (reset the PRAM; verified disk; repaired disk permissions--which always are the same, btw; a bunch of remote desktop management...ARDAgent stuff that makes no sense to me but I always seem to have to repair them).

But moving through a few panels of systems preferences, I got a screen freeze. Mouse moved but nothing worked. Keyboard commands to reboot etc. didn't work, so back to hitting the power button. So frustrating, but at least I can get to a login screen. For now.

I did look at the Activity Monitor; nothing special. Looked at the Terminal logs for the past few days, when all went to ****. Not sure why I bothered. 40k messages, 99.99% of which are completely greek to me...

Next up: a flash/thumb drive to get my < 1 GB of Pages files, pdfs, and some assorted saved web pages stored in case something worse happens between now and an installation of Mountain Lion. (If I had tons more, I'd invest in a backup hard drive and Time Machine, but there's not that much stuff, space wise.)

I can't seem to do an Apple Hardware Test, though. That chooser screen doesn't come up for me; just the normal login screen. [All external devices disconnected except monitor, keyboard & mouse, but including ethernet cable; restarted while holding down the D key;...never get to the chooser screen, though...]

EDIT: wow, h-e-l-l was changed to ****.

FYI,

I have the new retina display MBP with external Dell monitor (mini-displayport in thunderbolt port to DVI). Factory install of Lion (10.7.4). Bug still exists.

Sleep with password to wake works fine for me.

Shutdown w/o app windows opened then startup works fine for me.

Shutdown with app windows opened then startup has external monitor have no wallpaper (ext is the main screen - has the menubar).

Maybe Apple will address this in Mountain Lion?

the only thing that fixes this for me is quiting the dock in the activity monitor, and even that takes a min or so to restore itself. as for Apple fixing this? When have they ever fixed little things that bother us 😐

I guess I dunno how to use this forum properly as my edit seemed to cut off my original response and I can't seem to find an edit button:

Apparently, this problem has been resolved in Mac OS X Mountain Lion. This is just going off a comment made by someone else who has access to the developer version (I'm assuming he's a developer). Although, I can't confirm until Mountain Lion is officially released and installed on my Mac.

Hopefully, Mountain Lion is to Lion as Snow Leopard was to Leopard when it comes to improvements and fixes.

Yep. Happening here too. MBP 17" 2011, Lion 10.7.4, 16gb RAM, i7.

I usually turn my monitor off when I'm done with the computer. When I power the monitor back on, I hit the keyboard or the mouse (both Bluetooth connections). My monitor (a Samsung SMB2430HD) is connected via HDMI to the mini DVI port using the Apple HDMI-DVI dongle.

About 70% of the time, the computer is fine. The other 30%, I get a HUGE login screen-- I say HUGE because the lower left hand corner of the login dialog is displayed on the upper right hand corner of the monitor.

I also have the Grey Gardens issue. I've done the killall Dock command, but I can't do that when I get the giant login screen-- I have to unplug the DVI cable and plug it back in. Seems to work after that.

Ah well...

My computer got worse and worse until I realized I could take it to the Apple Store for a free diagnostic. Turns out my video card had fried. Got a replacement and now everything seems to be working.

I know that's not much help for most everyone else in this thread, but that appears to have been my issue. I hope Mt Lion is an improvement for all of us.

Don't want to create false expectation... but I have Mountain Lion since yesterday and it looks like the issue was fixed... anyway happend something similar with the last update and 4-5 days later I started to see the gray screen again and my monitor wasn't detected straigh away most of the times...

So... I'll post back in a couple of days...

"Awesome"

Is there any feedback form of an international support? or I am on my own with the local service as long as I am outside USA?

It is still so boring to speak with the walls on this thread. I am watching it for at least 5 months without any resutls!!! Without answers from an "apple" which simply doesn't care.

I have an early Macbook Pro 15inch model 2.4ghz with 6gb RAM and 1TB HD

since downloading the new Mountain Lion, my computer randomly puts me into sleep and when I try to wake it, I just get a dark screen. This has been happening more frequently. I then shut down the computer using the power off button at the top right of my Macbook pro and If I do a basic restart, it will restart to a black screen. If I do a option start, it will boot up to a visual screen that gives me an option of which hard drive to boot from. I havn't had these issues until after I downloaded Mountain lion. I just got off the phone with apple support and she wasn't sure what was causing the issues. She checked my system preference - energy saving settings and determined that they were set correctly. I aslo did a PRAM reset mentioned in early comments and that didn't help. I am cringing as I type thinking my computer will go dark at anytime now! Any other suggestions?

Thanks