Macbook Air (2013) - randomly getting blank screen - Force Restart only option

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Best.

I'm having exactly the same issue as you describe.

Mine is further complicated by mostly using a Thunderbolt Display. Connecting the display results in a black screen but the computer is 'awake'. A fix is to keep connecting / disconnecting the display until an image appears.

The laptop and display have been in to be checked out. Both check out OK. Yet still it happens and can be replicated.

Infuriating.

Tristan

Yes, I use parallels. But I have also experienced this when no user-added applications were installed (after wiping the system).

I have one hot-corner set up to put the display to sleep. Other than that I have a pretty base system with only an apple keyboard and mouse. I had a clean ML install that I restored my home directory to following the apple store visit. Then added back the few applications I use (Office, Parallels etc).

The Apple Store wiped it and replaced the I/O board thinking that was the issue. I have also taken my ThunderBolt display in for repair with the cable and logic board being replaced.

Taking both in again as the issue is still occuring in Mavericks.

I've put a few videos up on youtube to show what happens with my setup (mostly with the external display). The final video is closest to what you describe.

http://www.tristancollins.me/macbook-air-woes/

Tristan

I am having this same issue on my Macbook Pro Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013. It has only become an issue tonight and has never happened to it any time before hand. I have recently updated to Maverick (About a week or two ago) but have never experienced this issue before today.

Anyone find a solution aside from having the logic board replaced? I have apple protection plan but am hoping I don't have to go through all the troubles.

I've got the same problem with my new model MBA 13. It happened sometimes in Mountain Lion, happens multiple times a day in Mavericks. I opened a ticket yesterday with Apple and they couldnt figure it out on the phone, so I've got a genius bar appointment tomorrow. Even though its been just over 90 days, I'm planning to give the machine back. I've had too many problems -> wifi issue, this problem, and machine hard reboots overnight sometimes (I know because when I come to the computer in the AM I'm greeted with the "You restarted your computer because of a problem" dialog). I'm going to ask for an older model, pre-superpowersaving. I'd prefer the MBP 13 non-retina, but I suppose another previous gen MBA would work. I do NOT want another one of these machines, hopefully they can make that happen.

<rant> I had to hard reboot yesterday after coming back from lunch. Time Machine was running at the time and the hard reboot fubar'd the disk. It wouldnt mount and disk repair kept telling me the disk was no good, "Reformat and restore from backup"! Kinda upsetting when its your backup drive they are telling you to restore from backup... After about 30 mins of rebooting and attempting to repair the disk over and over, the disk finally came back to life. I do not want another one of these new model machines. <rant>

I have the same issue with my MacBook Air 2013. I had no problem until I updated to Maverick. After that, the problems came the next day. First my MacBook just shut down out of the blue and did not open any more. I finally figured out that I had to hold the power button for about 15 secound for it to open.

The next problem was that when it goes to sleep it would not wake up. The keybourd is lit, it seems to work (if I push the Caps Lock is lights), but there is no video. The only way to solve this is to do a hard shut down on the power button. It is horrible, I would have never upgraded to Maverick if I knew Apple would release something with such big bugs.

Now the workaround I found is to set sleep to Never (in energy saving menu) and to uncheck put hard to sleep.

I would also like to add that I installed all updates available to this day 05 November, so it is not un update issue.

I hope Apple fixes this horrible bug soon.

From the sound of it, we have exactly the same issue. My keyboard stays lit, but the screen is off and I must hard restart to get it to work again. I have changed my settings to never sleep and uncheck put hard to sleep and such and hope this will work. If it does, you are awesome and thank you very much because I have been trying to discover a work around for the past couple of days with no success.

I've been having this issue as well with my MBA 13 (purchased in June right after the new release). It has been doing it more often lately and I have upgraded to Mavericks. I will try to change the sleep settings to see if that changes anything, but I imagine that will affect the battery life. I never purchased Apple Care becasue my first experience with a white MacBook in 2009 was great. Never had any issues. I will be very disappointed if this issue cannot be resolved without hardware replacement.

Returned my 2013 MBA to an Apple Store earlier this week. Washing my hands of the entire thing. I've got a last-gen MBP coming factory direct as we speak. I'm willing to bet it won't have any problems. Haswell arch was a nice idea, but...

The cause seems to have been figured out here >https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475679

Look for the posts by @yoganinja .

I demonstrated this behavior at the Apple Store on 11/2/2013 on my machine and in their test environment. It is easy to reproduce and easy to avoid. I've provided details in this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5475679?answerId=23783262022#23783262022&ac_cid=tw123456#23783262.

When the display turns off, it goes through three stages: 1. the screen dims, 2. the screen goes black, 3. the keyboard backlight turns off. Tapping the spacebar or swiping the trackpad anytime during stage 1 will reset the timer. Tapping the keyboard or swiping the trackpad during stage 2 will freeze the black screen with the keyboard lit up. Waiting until stage three to tap the spacebar will wake up the display and everything is fine.

There is less than a one-second window between stages 2 and 3 while the screen is black but the keyboard is still fading that touching the input devices will hang the machine.

Yes, same issue mine too. Only I tried to use skype for the first time and sound was not going the other side. However facetime was working fine. I retrieved from the black screen by pressing power button alongwith shift button for more than 15 seconds. Thanks for the support, otherwise my 10 days old MBA 13' would have been back to authorised dealer outlet today.