Second display problem with 10.9.4

I had the same issue so I called and paid for apple care… was an awesome experience, thought I would share the value:

After all of the typical troubleshooting steps failed to resolve anything... he walked me through the following:

restart in safe mode:

-shut down your laptop.

- press and hold shift key, press power key, keep holding the shift key until the apple and spinning gear are on the screen, then release the shift key.

Login.

Finder, GO, Computer, MacintoshHD/Library/Preferences: drag anything with “windowserver” filename to trash.

Finder, GO - hold down the option key (you will notice the list changes to include Library), Library/Preferences/ByHost: drag anything with “windowserver” filename to trash.

Empty Trash (if anything left in trash, then go Finder, Secure Empty Trash)

Then restart.

This worked for me. Good luck.

Gents,

I fixed my problem.

Here is the solution to my problem.

I bought a Mini display to VGA adapter third party brand that works fine with Mountain Lion.

Never had any problems, so I never guessed that it would give problems with Mavericks, but it does !

Just tested Mavericks with an official Apple cable and it works !

Took me weeks to figure this out, so I will never be cheap on these items...

Buy and use the official Apple cable because in my case these third party cables do not work with Mavericks anymore.

Greetz,

Hanko

I finally got it working. Based on a vaguely related discussion https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6623697 I tried the following steps

Apparently, I needed to reset the SMC before resetting the PRAM/NVRAM. Here are the steps that I did, who knows how many matter

I'm experiencing similar problems with a MacBook Pro 15" Mid 2010. My external monitor, an Asus PB278Q, is connected by a Lindy MiniDisplayPort -> DisplayPort cable. All Mac OS X Versions prior to 10.9.3 had no (only sometimes) problems to use the external display (and with full resolution - 2560x1440). Starting with 10.9.3 the PB278Q occasionally got no DisplayPort signal while working and regularly after waking-up from stand-by. Only a computer restart got the signal back for the external display. Since 10.9.4 the external monitor is mostly not recognized - neither at fresh startup nor at wake-up from stand-by. I've to reset the NVRAM and SMC and restart between 5 and 10 times (while praying) in order to get an image on the external display.

Connecting the monitor with the Apple MiniDisplay to DVI-single-link adapter works every time (but of course only in FullHD resolution). I haven't tried a DVI-dual-link adapter, yet.

It's very frustrating since I invested in a "more-than-HD" resolution monitor, but cannot use it properly in 2560x1440px mode.

Summary: Try disabling DropBox

I filed a defect with Apple and they requested various system configurations which I uploaded. I'm still working with an engineer but he recommended I try disabling DropBox. Once I quit DropBox applications, my second display detects properly and CPU does not spike to 101%.

While this is not a log term resolution, it does allow me to use a secondary display.

BUY THIS CABLE: http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-SuperSpeed-2048x1152-1920x1200/dp/B00BPEV1XK

I've had this problem with my external monitor since I installed the 10.9.2 update. Tried PRAM resets, time-machined (fruitlessly) back to 10.9.1, swapped out kext files (computer gave me white screen of death), bought different mini-dvi cables, sent Apple bug reports, made threats, cried myself to sleep, etc. NOTHING WORKED-- short of buying a new imac because I'm a bajillionare with plenty of time and money to throw around.

After about 4+ months of not having an external monitor, pretty much everyone knew of my problem because it was always my wet blanket that I'd throw into a conversation when work came up. Had a friend recommend me this cable because it turns an available USB 3.0 port into an HDMI/DVI output. High resolution, video on it lags a little, colors might be a little wonky so basically: 1. Don't play video on it and expect a good time, 2. Don't print preview stuff on it.

I haven't tried the Yosemite update yet and have only heard wishful rumors that external monitors work now. For $50 however, this adapter is a cheap and usable fix to end the frustration of having a huge blank screen burning into the side of your face every time you're working on your computer.

Hope this info helps. Let me know if you have the same success!

I had the same problem - this is how I solved it.

I have an iMac 21.5 inch 2.9GHz that was running Mavericks 10.9.1 that I purchased on January 20th 2014. In December the screen started going crazy, it was stretched out and flickering, so much so, that I couldn't even restart it as the dock was down under the edge of the display. So I took it to the Genius bar at Apple and they repaired it by replacing the display (took a couple of days only - very professional and happy with their work).

Everything worked fine again, except my external monitor no longer worked. That is, the iMac recognised the external monitor (I could see its features in the System info > Hardware > displays) but the screen was black. It was an LG monitor attached via a VGA cable with a Thunderbolt adapter. Note: It worked fine before I took the iMac to Apple, but after they had replaced the display I lost my external monitor.

As I still had an Applecare account I called them > waited 15 minutes until I could talk to someone. We did the following steps:

1) SMC restart

2) PRAM restart

3) Restart in Recovery mode (used Disk Utility to check the MJac HD - all was normal)

4) Restart in Safe mode

5) Upgraded to OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks

Nothing worked!

So to fix this issue I bought a third party cable (a Belkin HDMI to Mini DisplayPort (Thunderbolt) adaptor. As soon as I plugged in this new cable the external monitor came to life! Note: there are also VGA to Thunderbolt cables available but since my external monitor had HDMI ports I decided to try this.

Seems to me (at least in my case) that it's a hardware problem, not a software issue.

Note: I didn't want to upgrade to Yosemite as I was concerned about losing my Bootcamp partition, which I have spent months installing software that I didn't want to lose. Apparently, there is a risk the Yosemite can wipe the bootcamp partition so I stopped at 10.9.5 (Mavericks).

Hope this helps ; )

I lost my second monitor, as well... the same thing happened with 10.9.3, and I fixed it with the following kext replacement. I just repeated the procedure, and my monitor is back; Apple, this is getting old.

To everyone who hasn't seen this -

gatd4

Re: 10.9.3 only lets me use 2 of my 3 30" displays

May 17, 2014 2:34 AM (in response to frabtious)

down load kext utility here http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/Kext-Utility.shtml

download Kexts here https://www.dropbox.com/s/a510p6a9immdboc/Kexts.zip

unzip the file

delete all Geforce and NVDA kexts located in your system/library/extensions

open kext utility and drop the all the kext files you downloaded on the window

wait till complete

reboot

now all monitors working again!

*****

gatd4's solution worked perfectly for me! It might not work for non-NVDIA Macs, but it worked on my 2008 Mac Pro. Thank goodness - good luck!

I attempted to roll back to the 10.9.2 kext for my AMD 6000 and it made the display unusable even with HDMI (which is what i'm left with after 10.9.3).

WRT the developer account suggestion, this bug has been filed, and refiled... they've known about it for some time (a bug filed against it receiving number 17083693 was closed as a duplicate of the even older 16197028).

With 10.9.4 being released fixing nothing related to this old issue, it's apparent that Apple doesn't care about the subset of users who are crippled by something as basic as having a correct display.

Well, you are not alone!

Someone at Apple is doing crazy things about the graphic drivers.

Actually I have big problems using more than one monitor on the new Mac Pro 2013 since 10.9.4

They say they made some changes in the drivers to get better 4K functionality in newer Macs.

Unfortunately the changes didnt just messed the Mac Pro up, they messed the whole system up...

Just for fun I tried to get the monitors working with the 10.10 Yosemite Beta. And it worked!!

In the End you probably have to wait until Yosemite is available. :/

Have you tried this work around:

<Re: Second display problem with 10.9.4>

<https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6430600?answerId=26542996022#26542996022&tstart=0#26542996>

Also it would help if you reported this problem via

BugReporter

<http://bugreporter.apple.com>

Free ADC (Apple Developer Connection) account needed for BugReporter.

Anyone can get a free account at:

<http://developer.apple.com/programs/register/>

The more reports the more likely Apple is going to give a greater weight to selecting this problem for a fix and that the fill will solve the problem for the most people.

Hi All,

I had the same problem on OS 10.9.5 but switched out my DVI cable to a DVI-to-HDMI cable, then have an HDMI to mini display port adapter and it seemed to fix the problem for me.

Good luck everyone!

I have the same problem with an ASUS PB278Q over thunderbolt. Not responding in any way. The problem got introduced in 10.9.3, the only thing that helped was a rollback to 10.9.2 and that is what I will to tonight. How unfortunate.

APPLE, please fix this.

I am having this same problem. I have found that sometimes if I turn the second monitor off, sleep the machine then power the monitor on and wake it the monitor will come display an image. This works about half the time.

Super frustrating!

I have an iMac with a second DVI display. Second display stopped working properly ever since 10.9.2 upgrade.

The monitor continually goes in and out of sleep. flashing on and off.

I've been completely through apple support and they say wait till a fix comes out which I was fine with but now it's strike 2.

10.9.3 no solution

10.9.4 no solution

I have a BS in computer science. I've done ALL the steps along with a bunch of other stupid suggestions I shouldn't be giving my time.

My favorite part of Apple has always been not having to deal with this crap!! I can understand hardware failures but this is unacceptable.

During a reinstall or recovery boot the monitor works fine. Once the desktop loads it starts flashing again.

This is a software problem. This is a huge -- hopefully embarrassing -- problem for Apple.

I'm a long time apple lover... this is a bummer. First time I've been disappointed with them besides iOS 7 just being ugly.