Q: Thunderbolt Display turns off randomly

Went back to different Apple store and left off display again after flickering and random blackout. This time Genius read prior notes and actually said the problem had been observed during first repair which was actually no repair, but rather an obeservation period of sleep/wake. This time, they replaced logic board and TB cabling. Just put back together with my system at home and will post again when / if completely resolved. Fingers crossed!

Im having the same problem. My Macbook Pro is late 2011 and was working great with my Thunderbolt Disply. All off a sudden it's started playing up. Tried resetting the laptop and still no joy. Doing my nut in. Any help would be much appreciated.

I had this problem with a new Thunderbolt Display a few weeks back. The screen would go black and come back on again frequently and most annoyingly. They replaced the all in one cable and that fixed it. Guess what, the reason I am now having a groan is that I have another brand new Thunderbolt display with exactly the same problem. Clearly, the all in one cable that is built into the monitor is being poorly made. I'm assuming this is not soldered in but just a plug type connection, so I would say they've made a dodgy batch of cables. I have a 3rd Thunderbolt display that I'm just about to deploy to someone else. We have quite a lot of these displays, but any purchased before November last year seem OK so far. If the 3rd new one I'm about to deploy has this problem also, I will be having a very big moan indeed. They are rather heavy to carry about a mile to the Apple Store. Considering it's DOA they should really pick it up and send a new one, but taking it to the Oxford Authorised Repair Centre is the easiest way to get service. Once repaired I will confirm whether it was the cable or not.

Actually I have a fourth new one too - so we should be able to identify how bad a batch there is. I'll keep this forum updated.

Cheers, John.

Also I've just tried a different MBP Retina (15 rather than 13) and the screen is flickering like crazy. When it stops raining I'll walk it down to the repair centre and hopefully in a couple of days will have a response.

Its not the cable I have had it replaced twice with no success.  Mine is in the shop right now and they are trying to swap the power supply and now have swapped the display.  I have a feeling the quality control on the mfg of the displays was pretty bad.  Sad thing is that with the cost of replacing the display you might as well just buy a new one!

This helped me!  I stopped using the all-in-one cable and connected a seperate Apple Thunderbolt Cable between Macbook Pro Retina and 27" Thunderbolt Display.  All my flickering, connections, and sounds problems went away.

I still use the all-in-one ot power my MBPR but the seperate Thunderbolt Cable for the display until I can get back to the Apple Store to have my all-in-one cable repaired.

Yeah this is what i done too. All is working as it's supposed to so far. Poor that the thunderbolt cable from the screen is rubbish though.

Hello, so many people have had this issue including myself, so I'm going to add to this as its clearly a manufacturing defect.

So I started seeing the intermittent flickering then black screen about 4weeks ago. Tried all the resets and firmware updates but no use.

Called Apple and arranged for an authorised repairer to take a look. They tried the logic board but that didnt help. They said they could 'try' a new panel but they were not convinced. Decided against that as we all know how exspensive it is. Took it to the genius bar in Bromley together with a MBP 15" Retina. Managed to show the problem to the guy and he said it could be the LCD panel and or the Logic board. In the shop I remembered about the thunderbolt cable idea, so borrowed one and the display worked fine! Used it for around 45mins in the store worked perfectly. Decided it was the all in one cable at fault and using just the thunderbolt cable was good enough for me so I bought one and took it home.

After a about a days use the problem came back! Hours of research later I decided it could be a power issue. So I bought a new power supply and installed it. Display worked again perfectly and I thought great it's fixed! Display blacked out again last night. This seems to be the end of the display it wont turn on now even with swapping plugs, no peripherals etc etc.

I think there are major hardware conflictions in this batch of displays. Not sure what to do now - new LCD/Logic board/fan or chuck it in a SKIP!

Major annoyance for such an exspensive monior!

The monitor is back up after resting overnight and plugging replugging at the wall? No doubt it will fail again but I am lost to the reason it blacks out. Perhaps I will try without any devices connect to the display and see if that is the issue. Perhaps the wacom or keyboard is drawing power causing the blackout?

check earlier posts - I suspect the problem lies in the combination of a few small things that in total cause the display to fail. Cable quality, temperature, conncetor quality, PCB tollerances, etc etc. I suspect that this is why it is so difficult for apple to solve the problem.

I've been watching this thread but haven't contributed since my earlier notes on the problem. The short version is that the TBD worked like a dream until I upgraded the Mini's memory from 4GB to 16GB with non-Apple memory. Putting the 4GB back in cured the problem. Putting the offbrand modules in resurrected he problem. I put in 16GB of Apple memory and the problem went away. Wanting to see if that was the issue all the time, I bought 16GB of Crucial memory, installed that and it's been running almost a year without so much as a flicker. The Apple memory went back and I've been happy with the system ever since.

Your mileage may vary, but it seems you've changed a lot of stuff without examining the memory modules. Might be worth a shot.

Thanks Steven, If this is the case we are all doomed. Dont think there are enough people with this problem for Apple to recall and admit failing on quality contol.

Thanks Bsammon but the MBP Retina doesnt allow you to swap/upgrade memory its soldered onto the board. I've had the MBP hooked up to a Samsung LED via HDMI and had no problem whatsoever.

The Thunderbolt display was taken to the Oxford University authorised repair centre with no fault found. Annoyingly, I had to get the user to video the evidence when it happened which they did. I've now carted it down to the city centre repair centre - so we'll see what happens there. I put money on the all in one cable again though.Will keep posted

Alas it was the All in One Thunderbolt/Power Cable. New cable - problem solved.