When waking Macbook Air 2012 from the Login Screen, the display flashes, then works normally. Mildly concerned.

Ut was fixed for me in 10.8.3

Hi everybody,

Actually, I have rMBP early 2013 with the latest updates with 10.8.3 and the flashes happens from time to time when is waking up for a long sleep.

I haven't try the suggested workaround yet, though.

Cheers!

fernando

So, it seems that the way to stop the flashes from happening is to ask the OS not to get into hibernation mode at all. To do that you can change the "standbydelay" value to something bigger than 70 minutes (in seconds).

The problem (the screen flashes) seems to appear when the computer went into hibernation mode, and when you wake it up, it needs to bring back the content of the memory back to life, and that's when the flashes happen.

You can avoid using hibernation first checking that hibernationmode has the default value, which for a laptop should be 3

pmset -g

This will show you as well the default value for the variable "standbydelay" (it will probably be 70 mins in seconds). So if you change that value, that is in seconds, to something much bigger, then during the normal usage of the laptop, the computer will go to sleep but not hibernate, and therefore avoiding the flashes.

To change the value simply choose the time in seconds you what, for example, 24 hours = 86400 secs, and type the following:

sudo pmset -a standbydelay 86400

Please, do the above at your own risk. See the documentation first for pmset in here where you can see some warnings as well:

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/pmset.1. html

Cheers.

not fixed for me in 10.8.3, I have a mid 2010 MBP
but....

installing gfxCardStatus and forcing discrete graphics seems to stop the flashing..

Hi there,

Before I was saying that avoiding hibernation will bring back the system without flashing the screen... but for me was still doing it. But then I realize that it seems that "autopoweroffdelay" it's actually taking place by default in 14400 seconds. So I put that value to 86400 sec:

sudo pmset -a autopoweroffdelay 86400

, and now, I left the system the whole night just sleeping, and it didn't go to hibernation or autopower off, so when i woke the computer up this moring it came back very fast and no flashes. Could this be a way to avoid the flashes all together?

Cheers!

Gary? you said changing to the NVIDIA card to be used all the time stopped the flashes?. Do you really need to use gfxCardStatus?, because in the energy saving preferences of the OS you can un-click: "Automatic Graphics Switching" seems to suggest that it will then use one video card all the time. Am I right?

Cheers

well spotted.
I quit gfxcardstatus, tried un-clicking the AGS .... fingers crossed.

ah - famous last words..

forcing discrete witn GFXcardstatus seems to work, but unclicking the AGS in systems prefs doesnt seem to do much..

putting an EDID recorder in line with the monitor seems to have fixed it..

Hi Gary,

Can you be a bit more explicit?, what do you mean by "EDID" and "putting an EDID recorder in line with the monitor"

Cheers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_display_identification_data

I used one of these.

http://www.markertek.com/Connectors-Adapters/Video-Adapters/DVI-Adapters-Convert ers/Kramer/VA-1DVIN.xhtml

you can pick up similar for around $100 or less which is much less than a new motherboard.
given that apple dont seem to be in any rush to fix the problem.

Hi there,

This seems to be some kind of interface for external monitor, right?

I don't have an external monitor...

ah, I only had the problem on the external monitor.. sorry