jportnoy

Q: Mid-2013 Macbook Air screen goes black?

I just got my shiny new mid-2013 MBA (haswell 13" i5 256GB SSD 8GB RAM) and it's been rockstar (no WIFI problems). However, last night, when I was browing the web, the screen went black all of a sudden and wouldn't come back on. I had to press the power button (heard the fan shut off), and then press power again to make the system wake back up from sleep. Any ideas what caused this, and should I be concerned in the future?

MacBook Air (13-inch Mid 2013), Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Jun 20, 2013 2:41 PM

Close

Q: Mid-2013 Macbook Air screen goes black?

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

first Previous Page 11 of 62 last Next
  • by afakhori,

    afakhori afakhori Jul 31, 2013 10:51 AM in response to jportnoy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 31, 2013 10:51 AM in response to jportnoy

    I've got an 11" that I just got a few days after launch and I have had the exact same issue since day one. The frustrating thing is this was a replacement for a previous gen that had to be serviced multiple times. Hopefully they come out with a fix soon.

  • by Dragonmaw,

    Dragonmaw Dragonmaw Jul 31, 2013 12:19 PM in response to jportnoy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 31, 2013 12:19 PM in response to jportnoy

    Brand new 13-inch MBA, 8-gigs, i7, doing the same thing. I notice that it also seems to reset the launcher -- I lose wireless connection and my Dropbox sync goes offline. It is only dark for a few seconds, but a nuisance nontheless.

  • by gramorris,

    gramorris gramorris Jul 31, 2013 12:30 PM in response to stevenh21
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Jul 31, 2013 12:30 PM in response to stevenh21

    I think it's pretty safe to say it's a very widespread OS issue. Although there's a few on this thread experiencing serious problems, a few who are making a big thing out of it, it is a relatively minor inconvenience for most and an intermitent one at that.

     

    It's not happened to me now for days, but has happened to my wife on her Macbook Pro twice. Under normal circumstances she wouldn't have mentioned it but for the fact that I'd been complaining about it on my Air. I suspect her behaviour is relatively standard where for most people it'll happen a couple of times, they'll bash the keyboard, computer will wake, they'll shrug their shoulders and then carry on with what they were doing.

  • by tenoclock,

    tenoclock tenoclock Jul 31, 2013 7:41 PM in response to jportnoy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 31, 2013 7:41 PM in response to jportnoy

    Just got the new mid-2013 i7, 256gb 8gb version for 2 weeks, and noticed the same problem. Randomly blacks out and goes to sleep mode and comes back to login screen. i'm started to worry it might be a hardware issue. Should I be swapping those out?

  • by thefirst,

    thefirst thefirst Aug 1, 2013 8:07 AM in response to jportnoy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 1, 2013 8:07 AM in response to jportnoy

    I and 2 others in my office are having the same problem with brand new MacBook Air 13".  Apple please fix.  This is a major problem and is now occuring daily.

  • by perrylaj,

    perrylaj perrylaj Aug 1, 2013 8:43 AM in response to jportnoy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 1, 2013 8:43 AM in response to jportnoy

    Bought a 13" MBA last month, my first Apple product since the iPhone 3g (first Apple computer in almost a decade).  i7, 256GB, 8GB.  Having the same problem with black screens upon waking, and have had at least 4 complete lockups where I had to hold down the power button during a black screen and get it to reboot.

     

    Needless to say, it doesn't "just work". 

     

    Should I be making an appointment to get it looked at/possibly swapped?  Or is that not helping anyone?

  • by gtownblast,

    gtownblast gtownblast Aug 1, 2013 9:40 AM in response to jportnoy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 1, 2013 9:40 AM in response to jportnoy

    Quick update.

     

    I recently turned off the "Put hard drive asleep when possible" option within battery and power adapter mode. attached screen shots for my settings. I haven't had the problem for the last two days since I have updated this setting. I will continue to report any issues on this but I am 75% sure this has something to do with it.battery mode.png

     

    Energy_Saver_and_Mid-2013_Macbook_Air_screen_goes_black___Apple_Support_Communities.png

  • by mstrswrd06,

    mstrswrd06 mstrswrd06 Aug 1, 2013 5:19 PM in response to gtownblast
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 1, 2013 5:19 PM in response to gtownblast

    After another day I still haven't had the problem after switching that option off. I've been running mostly off the battery too, using Chrome,  etc. More later. Stay tuned...

  • by sketchell,

    sketchell sketchell Aug 1, 2013 6:08 PM in response to gtownblast
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 1, 2013 6:08 PM in response to gtownblast

    Thanks for the update. I had this happen during a business presentation yesterday which is not acceptable. Apple had better be looking at this as a priority.

  • by MLeardo,

    MLeardo MLeardo Aug 1, 2013 6:14 PM in response to mstrswrd06
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Aug 1, 2013 6:14 PM in response to mstrswrd06

    Sorry to tell you i disabled both as well and it's happened 10 times in the last hour.

  • by kimgood,

    kimgood kimgood Aug 1, 2013 10:41 PM in response to gtownblast
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 1, 2013 10:41 PM in response to gtownblast

    doesn't this somewhat impact the battery life ??

  • by mstrswrd06,

    mstrswrd06 mstrswrd06 Aug 2, 2013 4:12 AM in response to kimgood
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 2, 2013 4:12 AM in response to kimgood

    Maybe to a miniscule amount because the Macbook Air has a solid state drive in it instead of a traditional hard drive. So no moving parts, no motors, etc. It would be the equivalent of leaving a flash drive in your USB port all the time.

  • by kimgood,

    kimgood kimgood Aug 2, 2013 5:22 AM in response to perrylaj
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 2, 2013 5:22 AM in response to perrylaj

    Don't bother.

    I replaced with a brand new one, but it took only a couple of hour just to realize that this doesn't help at all.

    I wasted time and energy just to get this replaced and all in vain... setting up and backing up a computer cost a lot of your mojo.

    I hope my case was just like that of this thread starter, but maybe I'm not good at a lottery.

     

    How about others who recently got a new one, I'm quite at a loss with what to do next.

  • by mstrswrd06,

    mstrswrd06 mstrswrd06 Aug 2, 2013 6:32 AM in response to jportnoy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 2, 2013 6:32 AM in response to jportnoy

    FYI: Another day running off battery after disabling hard drive sleeping in Energy Saver prefs - still no flickers.

     

     

    This might be unrelated, but it could be a hardware issue so this may point to the root of the problem we're having here.

     

    In Chrome, on the New Tab page the screenshot thumbnails' colors are inverted. This could be a problem specific to Chrome, but on this thread over at MacRumors, everyone having this problem in Chrome is using... *drumroll* ...a mid 2013 Macbook Air.

     

    If it is a bad graphics card, that'd be real unfortunate news. Maybe it's a bad driver causing everything?

     

    I'm just spitballing at this point.

  • by gtownblast,

    gtownblast gtownblast Aug 2, 2013 7:26 AM in response to jportnoy
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 2, 2013 7:26 AM in response to jportnoy

    Same for me here, two days down without screen flickering after I unchecked put hard drive to sleep.

     

    Also note that I reset PRAM and SMC before doing this, but I still had issues after the PRAM SMC....

     

    to be clear, i did PRAM and SMC and did NOT adjust my power settings and still had issues.

     

    when i unchecked the "put hard drive to sleep" then did PRAM and SMC, so far my issue has gone away.

first Previous Page 11 of 62 last Next