Screen detection in clamshell mode problems

I have exactly the same issue with a mini DP to VGA adapter connecting to a Dell monitor. I thought it was something wrong with the adapter, now apparently it is not. It works great for the first time after every power off and power on cycle. Then it stops working after I wake the MBP 13 up from sleep.

I tried having everything connected before I woke my MBP, it detected the external monitor and started using it. But it won't activate the clamshell mode anymore, it just simply switched of the backlit of the screen on MBP. Then I tried another way, with everything plugged in except the mini DP to VGA adapter before I woke up the MBP. It gave me a second of blue screen then it had the main desktop on the laptop. I logged in and then plugged the adapter in. This time it would not even detect the monitor! If I chose to manually detect the monitor, it would not work as well, instead, it put the laptop unstable giving me distorted image from time to time (especially when I have the cursor on any icons).

This is such an annoying bug, hope Apple would be able to fix it ASAP. And much more annoying to me, this is the second bug I had with Apple products in a day! The iWork website is down and accusing my having wrong Apple ID / Password instead of giving users a proper notice. What happen to the quality control that Apple is proud of?

1) I installed 10.7.3, still no joy, although seemed to work okay in and out of sleep, as long it was never out of clamshell, i.e. booted from clamshell, slept on and off still in clamshell. Once it uses the built in screen it never forgets, like an elephant.

2) Where do we report bugs? Idiot question of the day!

MBP Late 2011 13" 10.7.3 clamshell broken, same laptop 10.6.8 works fine.

Yeah same goes for my 2011 MBA, I was crossing my fingers 10.7.3 would fix the behavior but it didn't. I can't believe something like this has not been fixed...

The problem with mine was that I had the DisplayLink kernel extension installed, even though I wasn't using a monitor via DisplayLink. DisplayLink drivers are included with many external display adapters, such as with most USB->DVI display adapters. You can check to see if you have it installed by looking in /System/Library/Extensions. Unfortunately, the latest version of the DisplayLink driver has this problem. DisplayLink and Apple know about the problem, but it isn't listed as a "known issue" in the release notes for the latest DisplayLink driver.

Did anyone else here find out the problem was caused by DisplayLink?

I definitely was using a DisplayLink adapter and had the drivers installed. I removed the DisplayLink driver and will test it out later to see if that was the main issue.

I've been having this problem at least since 10.7.2 and I've never had anything from DisplayLink installed on my machine. It still continues to be a problem for me under 10.7.3.

You can file bug feedback here, which I did and I suggest everyone else who's having a problem do:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I uninstalled my old DisplayLink drivers and restarted and still have the same issue. C'mon Apple how hard it is to get this right? Why on Earth would the internal laptop screen come on when the lid is closed and it worked perfectly fine in SL?

I'm going to cross-post here what I just added to my thread about this on MacRumors:

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All right, I have an update. I went to play WoW on my Air for the first time in forever and was frowning because I wasn't able to get more than 20 FPS on even the very lowest settings — in the past I was able to pull a solid 60 under "Good," so this really ticked me off. After googling around I found a few references to people having poor GPU performance with, again, DisplayLink drivers installed even when they weren't doing anything that used them.

I was certain that I didn't have anything from DisplayLink on my computer but just to exhaust all possibilities I searched for directions on how to completely remove them and found this response from a DisplayLink employee:

http://www.displaylink.org/forum/showpost.php?p=4228&postcount=2

I'm not sure the uninstaller caused the issue, anyway if you want to manually remove the driver you must remove the /System/LibraryExtensions/DisplayLinkDriver.kext (you need to login in as root) and remove the following files: /Library/LaunchDeamons/com.displaylink.usblistener and /Library/LaunchAgents/com.displaylink.useragent.plist. In order to rebuild the kernel extension cache run the following command:

touch /System/Library/Extensions

I looked in those folders and sure enough, all three of them were on my system. I deleted them and ran the terminal command, rebooted and pulled WoW up: same "Good" settings as before and suddenly I was back to 60 FPS!

On a whim I figured I would test my other issue: knowing that clamshell mode at least for me worked fine following a reboot just as long as I didn't put the machine into sleep mode, I slept it, unplugged it from power, twiddled my fingers before turning it back on and closing the screen and... much to my shock, I got the rarely-seen blue screen flash and suddenly just the external monitor was outputting. The internal one was off. I was stunned. I spent 20 minutes attempting every possible permutation I could think of but without fail clamshell mode worked as it should under Lion — I could close the lid, I could wake it from sleep, I could lift the lid and close it again, etc. It always worked.

I will report back if anything changes but in the past it never failed that the first time I put the Air to sleep, clamshell mode stopped working until I did a reboot. I'm really, really, really hopeful that this fixes the problem completely because this has been driving me crazy since last year. If the bug returns I will come back and bump this, but for anyone else who's still having problems I'd suggest using the manual uninstall instructions I linked above. I have no clue how anything from DisplayLink got on my computer (the only guess I have is perhaps AirDisplay uses their drivers to some extent?) but for me so far that seems to have totally fixed the problem.

So hey guys does Thunderbolt transfer video AND audio??? I have been using MiniDV to HDMI on my brand new Pro.....

I can confirm your experience, if I remove the displaylink files you mentioned then Lion clamshells just fine, except I can't use my 2nd monitor (it's DisplayLink).

I tried DisplayLInk 1.7b5 (the latest beta version I could find), same result as my original drivers.

Anyway, uninstalling fixes the clamshell but costs me my 2nd monitor, reinstalling gives me a 2nd monitor but then I can only use my laptop in clamshell and not in and out of clamshell.

But Snow Leopard always works, either way!

Waiting for a driver fix, I guess... not sure who's to blame here.

I'm having this same problem in 10.7.3 on a 13" MBA. I just downloaded and installed the latest DisplayLink driver (1.8 Alpha 1)—even uninstalled the old one first using the uninstaller included—and had hoped that this would help but I am still having the same problem.

I have one monitor running off the Thunderbolt port (using the Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter) and another with a Plugable UGA-165 USB 2.0 to VGA/DVI/HDMI Adapter. I am assuming that the one running off the USB port is the problem but I'm not certain.

The two external monitors work fine, but I don't need or want the internal LCD going while it's supposed to be in clamshell mode. (Though obviously it's not actually in clamshell mode; that glowing white Apple seems to indicate that.)

How do I go about reporting this to Apple? I've only had it a month so I suppose I can call them. I filled out the bug form that one of the earlier posts mentioned, but that seems like sending an email to nowhere--no idea if anyone will read it much less act on it.

I'll post something similar in the DisplayLink 1.8 aplha forum (http://displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1538) and see anyone there responds.

Thanks in advance.

Scratch that. DisplayLink said the 1.8 aplha forum was closed so I ended up posting here: http://www.displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1359 (though it looks like the same or similar issues are discussed in several different threads).

And from what I saw on the DisplayLink forums it sounds like this is an OS X bug that must be fixed on Apple’s end and not something that they (DisplayLink) can fix via their drivers.

Is it confirmed that this is fixed in Mountain Lion? I wonder if that's worth joining the Mac developer program in order to get Mountain Lion now rather than wait until this summer. (Still, I'd rather them get a few more betas of ML under their belts before I install it.)

And, second question, if it's fixed in ML, does that mean Apple's not going to fix it in Lion?