Thunderbolt Display turns off randomly

Yes Dennis. It is only a work around but it is working, and for that I am grateful that the integrated cable was found to be a common cause of the problem.

Well my semi local Apple store manager surprised the heck out of me. I brought my two TBDisplays and computer and TB hub in for a couple rounds of genius bar tech time. After going over the last 3 month long case file, they came to a conclusion. They offered to refund me my entire purchase costs, including my Apple Care plan for the two monitors that I had for nearly 16 months............I jumped at the offer. I wished for this answer, but never thought they would do this. My online and telephone Apple tech said he couldn't make that offer, nor would he tell me who could. The bottom line is Apple knows there is a problem with the TBDisplays. My best guess is there are problems with the built in hub in the displays. Whatever was plugged into the hub, whether another TB display or another hub or the USB ports. Those devices always seemed to be dropped for various reasons. Whether sleep mode or start up or who knows what else. I feel rather lucky at this point. I can now move forward instead of doing the constant try this, try that approach. I had over a year of that type of trouble shooting. Never once did an apple tech tell me they were looking for problems here. But the store manager and genius bar tech were well aware of the issues. Of course me bringing in two TBDisplays, computer and stuff in their original boxes on a busy saturday, might have helped. It doesn't help business to make a scene with a store full of customers. Thank you Apple.

I have a Macbook Pro 13" and a Thunderbolt monitor. I use the Thunderbolt, Firewire, Ethernet AND USB ports (all of them). My monitor started blacking out randomly and all the peripherals would stop giving me a plethora of "Disk ejected improperly" messages. Only a complete restart would get it (and all the peripherals) working again. Then, a few days ago, the TB monitor blacked out and would NOT come on even after a complete restart, panic time.

IT SEEMS FIXED NOW, THIS IS WHAT I DID: I just reset the PRAM and the monitor came back on. (OS X Yosemite: Reset your computer’s PRAM) After the monitor came back on, I went into system preferences and unchecked the auto-adjust for the monitor but I doubt that was it - most likely, at least for my system, it was the PRAM. I've been using it several days and no black-out thus far so that seems to have done the trick.

I have a TB display (mid-2011) and in the last month, I've had intermittent 'black outs' that only a force quit, re-start would resolve. The grey start up screen was also intermittent.

I tried kenshack88's suggestion of carrying out a PRAM and, in the last 24 hours, the display has been as good as new. THANK YOU.

I was shuddering at the prospect of following Dennis Jacob's route of enquiry because I live in Asia, and the support here is fraction of what you guys in the West get, sadly.

My reason for posting is to register it as a fix, with reservations. i.e. if it starts to go dark on me again, I will re-post, but for the time being, I am back where I really, really wanted to be.

Hi everybody i came accross a support case where the issue with the Thunderbolt 2011 is the firmware of the cable... Try going to the system report and take a look at the thunderbolt cable firmwares. Hardware>thunderbolt. I have 2 TBDs one 2012 and one 2011 version each have different cable firmware 0.1.18 and 1.0.16 respectively. Bought a new TB cable and connected that between my two TBDs and i'm on my 4th week of not having the black screen even when coming from sleep mode or complete restart. hope this helps.

Well, my PRAM deal did not fix the issue, nor did pulling all my USB, firewire cables. It seemed to go for over a week when I posted above but the black-outs have begun again. My cable firmware is 0.1.18 so probably Jsonharle is correct. Is there any way to replace the power/thunderbolt built in cable without taking it to Apple? (I bought this in Germany and live in Albania so there is definitely no service here) APPLE is beginning to look like just another mega-corporation that doesn't pay attention to detail. This was a really lousy purchase.

The PRAM reset did not fix my issue either. Oddly, it seemed to improve radically for a while, but is still blacking out occasionally. My only way "back" is a force quit from the CPU.

One addition to those posted, is that I'm not powered by Thunderbolt. At the time I bought the system, Thunderbolt was available by adding card, which was out of my budget. I've always run the display off of firewire.

I face similar logistical issues to kenshack88 in that Thailand's apple support is a fraction of what is available to the U.S. and the west. I too feel very disillusioned by what I have ended up with for such a high outlay. I'm waiting for a recall, but that seems to be my last hope, unless it's a bug that can be fixed. Time consuming and expensive trips in to see an apple genius, just aren't possible for me. 😟

My days are constantly plagued by the Thunderbolt Display shutting down at random now.

With the very low-key level of support here in Thailand (Apple genius is 140 km away, and has limited English PLUS no active phone support), I can't see any hope other than watching for a product recall. Strangely, Sales lines to Singapore are free calls.

The days of my large Apple purchases are now in the past. I'm extremely upset by this scenario. Sorry to rant.

I'm with you Steve, so I'll join your rant. I bought my display in Germany and live in Albania (zero Apple support). I've tried everything and now my display goes off after 30 seconds to 2 minutes so now I don't even try. One extremely expensive black monolith on my desk taking up space while I try to get work done on all 13 inches of my MacBook Pro. If I weren't locked into Final Cut Pro right now, I would, for the first time since 1986, be looking to move to the PC world (I recently got burned by Aperture and am moving 10s of thousands of photos to Lightroom). I'm already selling all 5 of my families iPhones and moving to Android - beginning the long pilgrimage away from the Socialist Republic of Apple.

I have this problem for years now. I was a happy user of the TB display (2011) connected to a Mac Mini (mid 2011) for about two years (years ago), then the problems started. Today the display will not start up at all with that Mac Mini. I bought a MBP about a year ago. Interestingly connecting to the MBP the display worked. For some random hours each time.

I tried everything written in this thread, changed cables, memory in the Mini, software updates, microcode updates. resets, found companies who could service this, which proposed to upgrade modules without promising to resolve the issue...

But I finally gave up. While the TB display is still great (for the minutes it works), it is not possible to use it for anything. I substituted the display with some Dell HD IPS monitors (three of these connected to the TB, HDMI and the Apple TV (wireless) ports of the Mini. The wireless connection of the third monitor through the Apple TV has some lag, but is perfect for reading documentation or reading the web.)

My educated guess is, some software optimization in the Mac OS introduced a few years ago by Apple and the growing internal heat (caused by the gradual collection of the dirt in the systems - inside the machine and also inside the display) causes the problem.

The problems with the Mac Mini and the TBD started quite suddenly after years of smooth behavior without problems. I just vaguely remember now, but I had some problems with the energy saver functionality after an OS upgrade. And then the display stopped to be reliable after that.

If someone could test this environment (I mean a Mac Mini and the TBD) with the Mac OS of 2011, without later OS upgrades or patches, I would be very eager to know the results.

Perhaps it is just the fan in the display (and in the Mac) which is turned on too late when some components are already too hot.

The internal heat in the Mac and the fan of the Mac I can regulate with smcFanControl, and I could easily make the problem come up earlier or later by changing the fan rotations. This problem is temperature dependent for me. This excess temperature is then probably transferred through the cable into the display. But there are other factors for sure, it is not that easy. E.g. somehow the display “remembers” the bad settings. Even after the system cools down, it will not start up again every time.

At early stages a power reset of the display helped. Then I thought the display is dead. Then I connected the MBP and the display worked flawlessly...

Each system is somewhat different. Some memory upgrades generate more heat, the TB cable is a very good conductor of the heat between the machine and the display. The software is very different in each machine, the heat production is very different. The last updates made the problem better (but only for the newer environments) but did not fully resolve it.

Our whole family is a happy user of the Apple infrastructure. We are using iMessage, FaceTime and all the other stuff all the time. We do not have any bad experience with Apple aside fro this display. But this is still bad and there should be a way out of such problems.

Yes, this all hangs together with what I have experienced.

I have spent many years being pleased to speak up for Apple; yet having no idea how one-sided and sales-focussed their support lines were. It seems there is nobody there that will talk to me now.

One can't help but wonder how quickly Apple would RESPOND, if iWatches started to go black. 👿

I've had the same problem with mine it kept going off then went totally black and wouldn't come on...I've tried several work arrounds and it will no longer work at all so my question is...anyone know of any great creative hacks or uses for this big heavy paper weight? Maybe remove the glass and make a light table? Anyone with any Ideas...Hate to just throw it in the trash where it belongs!

Apple really should answer the mail on this. One of the worlds most profitable companies appearing to not give two hoots when a top of the range product is unusable in less than half of it's useful life.

Well, I have given up almost a year ago. For some reason I've tried to use TB display a couple of days ago, but no luck there.

I'm from Croatia, and we don't have an apple store here at all.

I'm just curious, can logic board replacement help? I can manage to do that on my own without any problems, and I see that there are a lot of logic boards on ebay. How can I know for sure what logic board will fit in my TD? Are they all the same, or ?

I'm gonna try to save it if I can. If not, I will compile a nice video of destroying the display, explaining why I am doing so, and then putting it out on youtube. I hope to get some attention, coz that's the only thing that can make apple react to this case. If this were an apple watch, they would be all over it. As it stands, not only am I moving from apple displays, I'm considering to move on Linux as well.

No point in paying premium when all I get is to be treated like trash.

Although I am sorry to hear of other people with my circumstances, it does show that it's a flawed product (or batch).

I have identical circumstances and am equally hugely disillusioned. Who wouldn't be? The display costs $1,000, and was useful for only FOUR years!

My Mac Mini (2011) has an HDMI socket. Does anyone know if I can just pick up an affordable, and reliable flat screen and simply hook it up to the Mac Mini via HDMI for sound and video?

For practical reasons I can't just chuck my toys out of the pram, but in the next few years, I am terminating my decade long relationship with anything Apple. When you live where I do, they only take calls on the sales line.😠