Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Level 1

5 points

2012 Mac Mini blank screen on wake from sleep in Mavericks

I just upgraded from Mt Lion to Mavericks and now my Mac Mini does not awake properly from sleep when I press a key on the keyboard. It stays dark but I can type in my password even when I can't see the input space and then hit the return and it then the screen functions normally. I have reset my SMC, zapped PRAM, ran Disk Utilities and DiskWarrior so I think I am covered on these. I have a Asus monitor connected by HDMI. Not sure what else to try. I see the problem surfaces occasionally for other versions of OS X and for a variety of Macs. Thanks. Doug

Mac mini (Late 2012), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 5:43 AM

94 replies

Paul Fitz

Level 2

244 points

Jul 28, 2014 11:21 PM in response to Doug Stoner

I think I might have gotten to the bottom of it here - I was also experiencing slow volume controls - i.e. I would press the volume controls, and have to wait up to 20 seconds in extreme cases for the volume controls to appear and the volume to change. Also while I did install Temperature Gauge Pro which seems to help somewhat with the blank screen, it did seem to be boosting the fans briefly all the time which was just annoying. Also the system and Safari in particular was generally sluggish, which was annoying for an i7 quad core machine.

Turns out this can be caused by problems with system caches. To delete these, you can startup in Safe Mode - I like to see what's going on so use the verbose mode. Open Terminal and use:

sudo nvram boot-args="-x -v"

...then reboot. The Mac will verbosely boot into safe mode (which will take a while). Once booted, give it a few minutes to finish sorting itself out, then put things back to normal with:

sudo nvram boot-args=""

...then reboot. I now have instant volume controls again and my blank screen problem has vanished.

Jul 30, 2014 9:03 PM in response to Paul Fitz

After installing Yosemite beta, the problem is gone, no more blank white login screen after idle

Paul Fitz

Level 2

244 points

Jul 31, 2014 1:34 AM in response to adrian727

Presumably you installed into a clean partition? I suspect installing a clean copy of Mavericks would also have resolved your issue.

Jul 31, 2014 2:02 AM in response to Paul Fitz

Nope, I'm installing to the same partition a.k.a. upgrade, maybe you can try wipe your harddisk and do a time machine restore

2012 Mac Mini blank screen on wake from sleep in Mavericks