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Gray background after wakeup after lion upgrade?

I have a MacPro i upgraded to Lion, it is a 2008 model with 2 Dell 27" monitors, and a ATI 5770 video card. After i upgraded to Lion everything seemed to work ok. the next morning i went back to the machine to wake use it again and when the monitors woke up, the background on the main monitor is grey, not the galaxy background that is the default. THe second monitor does not have this problem. Th only way i have been able to reset it to the image is to reboot, which i rarley do with this machine, It will stay on for months at a time, and i reboot only as needed. I have tried using the desktop & Screensave from system preferences and it does not do anything. I have even set it to change every 5 mins and it had no effect.


ANyone have a clue?


John

Posted on Jul 27, 2011 6:32 AM

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217 replies

Jul 31, 2011 10:20 AM in response to Johnm973

I am not 100% sure this fixed it, but the gray screen did not come back after this. You may not be able to do this anyway. But I was having two problems, 1. when the computer went to sleep and came back the desktop wallpaper would be gray on my main screen, 2. randomly my 2nd display (which was connected to HDMI via a converter) would display colored static and need the screen to be restarted.


After reading the other thread about the static some people were saying it might be the HDMI copy protection messing up. So I removed the Apple HDMI to DVI converter and connected HDMI stirght to HDMI into my Dell 24in display. My 2nd display is older and did not have HDMI in so I plugged that into the Mini-DVI port on my Mac Mini. (Basically switching the two monitors around on the outputs, maybe that fixed the gray?)


When I booted back up I put the machine to sleep several times and the gray background problem is gone so far. And I have not seen the static (yet) but the static is more random and harder to test if it's truely gone.


I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Aug 2, 2011 6:21 AM in response to Johnm973

Similar issue:

randomly (after wakeup, after 2nd monitor connected), the 2nd monitor (24" connected via DVI adapter) gets a grey background.

tried changing wallpaper, but no luck.

if you login/logout you get your wallpaper back (and yes, of course, also if you reboot).

annoying.


MBP 15" 2010


2,53 Ghz Intel Core i5

GB 1067 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 256 MB

Mac OS X Lion 10.7 (11A511)

Aug 8, 2011 11:22 AM in response to Johnm973

I have the same issue, except mine doesn't need sleep to do it. I get the same symtoms after the screen saver has been on for a lengthy period of time (maybe an hour?). It consolidates the windows to the primary screen as if the laptop's screen was disconnected and changes the laptop's background to grey. Once this happens, I am unable to get the desktop to reset without a reboot.


Incidentaly, this only happens to me when connected to dvi (dvi to mdp passive adapter). When connected direct to an ACD this doesn't happen.


So far, I haven't found a resolution, so I filed a bug on radar.


Has anyone else had any luck fixing this?

Aug 11, 2011 9:10 AM in response to lstroud

I've had the same exact problem. I'm using a macbook pro (15", mid-2009, MacBookPro5,3) and have a mini display port to dvi adapter (from Apple) plugged into a Dell 2408WFP display and running Lion. I put the macbook to sleep and sometimes (not always) when I wake it back up - the Dell display has a gray background. I'm using the get better battery life setting - so the video card being uses is the nvideo geforce 9400M 256MB instead of the higher speed graphics adapter (I think I'll try the higher performance one and see if that helps at all). I've seen the fuzzy display too a couple of times - strange to see that, reminded me of watching a non-channel on tv.


I also agree that when you get the gray background - there is nothing at all you can do to change it. The background


My workaround had been to reboot - which is a pain. Then I found out about logging out and back in - that's less bad.


Today I just plain old unplugged the mini display port and waited for it to settle down and plugged it back in - and the background is back to what it should be.

Sep 1, 2011 9:40 AM in response to Johnm973

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.

Sep 1, 2011 9:38 AM in response to Johnm973

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....

Gray background after wakeup after lion upgrade?

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