macbook pro retina issue

I'm having exactly the same problem. I thought I was going crazy until I read your report. Maybe it will need an OS update from Apple to fix - its really annoying as it can happen in the middle of me doing a demo or presentation.

Dean

Hey guys i would call up apple support and let them know about this issue theres a change that it is not supposd to be happening at all. remember its a brand new product and its not 100% guarentied also you can try a reinstall by going to your recovery partition command + r it will keep all your settings and all your data

before doing that try a pram and smc reset

pram command +option + p + r after turning on the computer (before the gray screen) press and hold till you hear the second chime

smc reset plug in your computer while its off hold control + option + shift (all left side) press the power button release all buttons and press the power button again

HI Jay

Thanks for the info. I tried both suggestions you had (PRAM and SMC) and it made no difference. Will ring Apple now but I suspect its probably an OS bug which hopefully they will fix.

Dean

I'm sure you've already figured this out, but Boot Camp will *not* work with anything except a retail disk. That's why your OEM disk won't work.

HOWEVER... you technically don't need to use Boot Camp to install Windows. You just set up the partition like you normally would using say Disk Utility, then manually boot to your Windows CD/DVD and install that way, selecting the partition you want to use. So long as the Windows version can boot to EFI (which WIndows 7 can) then you're good to go.

You can also use that same technique to install Windows to a different (or external) drive if you wish. For instance, on my Mac Pro, this is exactly how I installed OSX on Drive 1, then Win7 on Drive 2, again all without using Boot Camp.

I have having the same screen saver problem with my two day old Retina MacBook as well.

Sometimes, I cannot get it to wake up the display unless I unplug the external DVI monitor.

Hi all

Spoke to Apple support and they suggested creating a new user account (as the old one migrated from my old Mac using the wizard may have been corrupted). This made no difference to the problem. Also tried to delete the screensaver.plist files as someone else suggested - that also didn't help.

So, two outstanding problems with the Macbook Pro still unresolved.

1. Screensaver keeps kicking in while I am in the middle of working

2. If I put my Macbook pro to sleep when connected to the Thunderbolt display, it won't wake up unless I disconnect the DVI connector, and even then it takes many presses of the power button until it finally does wake up.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Hi, i have similar problem, Once in a while, external display just switch to totaly black screen for about 2 second and then the screen come back. This happens every few hours. I have now Mounitain Lion and problem its stil same as with Lion.

Success and all problems fixed 🙂

Solution was to uninstall the BVU195 Display drivers that allowed me to connect external monitors to the USB Port. I ran the 'Displaylnk install' program and told it to uninstall the drivers. It fixed immediately the following problems :

1. Screen saver was starting at random times - now works perfectly.

2. Putting my mac to sleep when connected to Thunderbolt display - if the Macbook pro lid was shut at that time, I could never get it to wake up. Now I just press the 'eject' button on the external keyboard connected to the Thunderbolt and it wakes up every time.

3. Skype was constantly saying my status was 'Away' and despite choosing 'Online' it kept switching to 'Away'. This problem solved as well.

I didn't find that I am getting younger and better looking as well, but wouldn't be suprised if it fixes that as well .

Thanks to Apple Support who spent much time on the phone trying to help and had booked a Genius bar appointment. I didn't even think to mention that I had those drivers installed. Needless to say that the Displaylink drivers are gone for good. 🙂

I am having this exact same issue, I have been trying to fix it for days on end to no avail.

I have a lot of external devices connected to my macbook and I am having multiple different issues but the HDMI to HDMI cable is a fairly standard one for me.

I have the following

rMBP -> HDMI Output -> HDMI Input of a Samsung Syncmaster 2493HM with the latest firmware installed on it, I have the latest version of Moutain Lion installed.

For me, when I boot up my machine with the HDMI connected it will just sit with both screens grey. After going to the apple logo the icon spins a little bit and then just sits at the apple logo with the screen of my external monitor grey. Sometimes I will get 4 squashed spinning beach balls that I can move around with the cursor, I know that the system is responsive cause I always have a curser that I can move around.

I have found that connecting this display to a Mini displayport to DVI adapter makes it work fine every time however this is not an option for me, I didn't buy a Retina Macbook with 2 thunderbolts and a HDMI to not use the HDMI.

I have found that if I boot the machine with the HDMI connected and do a PRAM reset it will boot into the logon screen fine, however if it restart the machine and let it try to boot again I get the same error.

The machine will boot fine with the HDMI connected when it is in safe mode.

If I boot into the recovery partition on my mac, there are no issues with the display.

I installed a fresh copy of mountain lion on an external drive and booting into that and I got the same error with the monitor output.

I attempted to do an install of lion onto an external drive but this mac won't let me because I already have mountain lion.

I used my friends rMBP to test and the same this is happening on his laptop, it booted correctly, maybe twice? but then it was having the same issues.

If I plug the HDMI into my HDMI TV, which is a Samsung something or other, I do not experience the issue.

I have installed windows 7 on my rMBP and it boot fine every time without issues, having said that, windows comes to the logon screen and the lights on my monitor go solid, but the screen remains black until I actually log on.

This is really, really frustrating.

There is a bunch of stuff in the console logs as well but I can't get to that right now because I have just typed this entire thing on windows 7...

Anybody have any clues about what this might be or what troubleshooting I might need to do to take this to Apple and say, there is something wrong with your new device/OS?

So it seems that after doing the OSX 10.8.2 update as well as the Macbook Pro Retina EFI Update 1.0 the issue is no longer occuring for me.

Anyone else who has this issue, try the update and see if that helps.

Ya im getting this problem as of today i got everything new.. i got acer 23" s230hl screen connected to my macbook pro 15" retina with hdmi just on wednesday this setup was working and now i just get a gray screen n the resolution on macbook goes bad but on monitor its fine it is mirrored and my laptop responds just fine like i tested it by going to login screen n click on my user name to enter password but i first connected the hdmi then put n password n it logged in but i didnt see anything but the 2 gray screens after i unplugged it i seen my dock normally i really need help.

Have the same issue. Happens about once per day while I'm using the computer, with or without an external monitor connected. Seems to have happened since 10.8.2. Did not notice it happening when I was on 10.8.1.

Changed energy saver settings back to default to see if it does anything, but clearly this is an issue that Apple has to address.

Wonder if it's related to the other MBPRetina black screen issue when coming out of sleep, which I also experience but using the workaround.

Ya i called apple and they said that it mite b a problem wit my monitor like the driver needs to be updated it did make sense to me y it would be a driver problem cause monitors should be universal so then i called acer n they said that they dont have drivers for mac since they dont support apple now.. then they wanted to charge me 100 to help me fix it n i jus hong up then i jus did a restore of my mb wit retina to orginal os which is 10.8 n then retried to connect the monitor but it didnt work still so then i called apple back n now i have appointment at apple store for them to check it but i jus returned my monitor to get my money back jus in case cause i still had 2 days left to return it so ima buy a new 1 then see if it works n then go to apple wit it but i m jus thinkin of buyin like a 24" led tv cause its only like 30-40 $ more n i noe that will work no matter wat cause my hdmi works wit 2 of my lcd tvs.. also i think it is a problem wit 10.8.2 cause my acer on windows was workin fine wit that monitor but wat doesnt make sense is that even after the restore it still gave me the black screen but like when i clicked the apple sign on menu before connecting the monitor i could somewat see the menu after connecting the monitor like most of the screen was black but some of the menu worked and it was responsive also the resolution became off alot after connecting the monitor like my mouse was 3 times its normal size n same wit the part of the menu i could see also apple told me to do the resets by holding the command opition contral left shift and p and r but those didnt help either!... story of my life