10.8.4 External Display Problem

This helped me, as well!!! Thanks a bunch. The problem(s) are annoying (I'm having two differernt variations of this 2nd monitor display problem) but, so far, your suggested simple approach of forcing to sleep and then waking it back up after 20 sec. or so is far less painful than the previous alternatives (unplugging/replugging the video adapter or restarting).

For what it is worth, I've had the issue pop up again a couple of times, but I think I solved it. I bought a nice new SVGA cable (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BFZGVHK/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&p sc=1). Now that is installed, monitor>kvm>generic vga adapter>mac mini, the display detects properly. Don't forget to hold down the ALT key when going in the display to get the Detect option to appear. Hopefully with the new cable that my setup likes I will not see this issue again. I assume it is a problem between the Mac and Monitor knowing the optimum resolution.

I recently purchsased a minidisplay port to hdmi cable to display my macbook pro early 2011 on an external monitor and it works perfectly. From my observations of previous posts the problem that seems to come with vga or dvi cables is that they dont support modern 1080p monitors. You still can display 1080p resolution with the cables but sometimes you get issues with screen orientation and placement. A cable like a hdmi or any other cable capable of 1080p will get rid of the the black bar(s) or any other issues related to displaying footage to an external monitor. At least this worked for me, hopefully it works for you.

This is the one I got:

http://www.amazon.com/Mini_Dis-HDMI-CB6-Mini-DisplayPort-Adapter-Cable/dp/B003OC 6LWM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1390091283&sr=8-2&keywords=mini+displayport+to+hdmi

Ive been having the same problem with the black bars left and right, running a Samsung VGA monitor.

Occasionally I can correct it by fiddling around with detect displays, however I found I would get stuck because my detect displays button would no longer work and hence the monitor would not revert to the full size screen.

I found a workaround to fix this by installing "Display Menu" and now when I come out of sleep or start my computer and find the bars have appeared I QUIT Display Menu on the task bar and then restart it from the dock, then "Detect Displays" on the task bar. Everytime I have done this in the past 3 days it has correctly detected the display and the problem is gone.

I know that this issue tends to have a slightly different fix for everyone, but anyone who is having an issue about the "Detect Displays" button failing to detect may like to try this.

Im running os x 10.8.5 on a new iMac.

Forget about the above link.

Worked fine for a week and then went back to its old ways.

Now Detect Display doesn't even work anymore.

If I buy a new monitor what inputs do I want that will not have this problem.

The Samsung monitor I am using only has VGA.

This is still a problem.

I was having really weird display resolution problems with my new Dell monitor. Thanks to all the people who discovered the cable as the problem. I just put a good quality VCA cable into my Mac Mini with adapter,and IT WORKS NOW ! cheers

Sooo... The problem seems to be the HDMI cable???

I'm having a resolution problem with my MacBook Pro 2011 on Windows 7. The highest resolution I could get to with my new Samsung 24" HDMI monitor is 1920x1080, but there are black bars on all sides of the screen. At first i thought it was a problem with the screen, I tied auto-adjusting it, manually adjusting it, but no luck. Everything works fine on the Mac side of things.

The only problem I have is when I'm using WIndows 7. It's weird that with the same cable and adaptor Mac OSX output a full screen 1920x1080 to the external monitor, but when I'm using Windows 7 there black bars on the sides.

So, does a better cable fix this problem??? What specs do the cables have to have???

Got the solution to this.

Connect a usb keyboard and mouse, close the lid of your MBP.

Your monitor should now display full screen (without the black sides).

😉

Had this problem earlier today while connecting to my monitor via hdmi and finally found a solution. Instead of selecting a monitor resolution, you can select a tv resolutions instead.

After opening display and going to display setting on your external monitor, hold the option key and click on scaled. You should see a lot more options. If you scroll to the bottom and select 1080p, it should work.

This worked for me. Also afterward you'll have to go into sound and switch the sound from your monitor back to your computer if your monitor does not have speakers built-in.

Hope it helps.

Thanks -- DVI cable did the trick. $6 on Amazon.

-S

Reviving this zombie thread as I had the same problem -- 1920x1080 VGA image shifted to the right with large vertical black stripe displayed on the left -- with El Capitan (10.11.2) on a Macbook Air. New Dell P2214H display running through a KVM. I tried all sorts of Thunderbolt adapters -- VGA, DVI-D with different DVI-VGA adapters, etc -- and none worked.

The fix was to install SwitchResX from http://www.madrau.com/ (I have no relationship with these folks, this was just the solution worked for me). Once installed, you can create a custom configuration for the monitor that sets the "horizontal porch," which is the width of the vertical black line. If you're running El Capitan, you'll have to follow the instructions here to allow SwitchResX to save the custom configuration.