Kernel Panic with HDMI or Thunderbolt Video Adapters

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Level 1

8 points

Kernel Panic with HDMI or Thunderbolt Video Adapters

Help!

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro with 15" Retina Display running OS X 10.10.3 For the past year or so, I've been using this machine to connect to both an external HDMI display via the port on the MacBook itself, and at different times to a VGA display using a VGA to Thunderbolt adapter.

Now, when I connect either of these display devices, not only do I not get no video on the external display, but the main display on the MacBook will go entirely dark (no back light at all, not just an all-black image). When I disconnect the external display, the main display doesn't come back on. It'll stay like this even if I close/reopen the lid, hold the power key down and reboot, etc. The machine will behave like it's on, the keyboard backlight will appear and the capslock LED will cycle.

If I power the machine up and then close the lid, leave it like that for 10 minutes or so, then open the lid it will sometimes return to normal operation as long as I don't attempt to connect an external display. Although twice now it's entered this "no display" behavior even when it's been nowhere near one of the external monitors. It's very alarming that this is happening even when I'm not connecting an external device now.

Several times when this is happened and I've gotten it back working, I've gotten a message saying there's been a kernel panic and the stack trace shows a bunch of window server and backlight drivers.

I've tried resetting the parameter RAM, and I've tried deleting the windowserver plist files. Nothing seems to make this better.

Any insights appreciated...

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Posted on May 13, 2015 12:07 PM

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Answer 1

AppleJoe

Community Manager

May 15, 2015 12:22 PM in response to jscheller

Hello jscheller,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities!

I understand that you are experiencing kernel panics on your MacBook Pro. You have already completed some good troubleshooting for this issue, but I would recommend reading over the attached article and working through the suggested steps within to further troubleshoot the issue.

OS X: When your computer spontaneously restarts or displays "Your computer restarted because of a problem." - Apple Support

Have a great day,

Joe

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Answer 2

jscheller Author

Level 1

8 points

May 15, 2015 12:44 PM in response to AppleJoe

Thanks Joe... I appreciate the response, but that article really didn't shine much light on anything.

I'm already up-to-date on the OS, and in fact it seems like this really only started happening since the last 10.10.x update or two. I don't have any unusual hardware drivers, it's a fairly vanilla OS and I'm not using any third-party RAM (obviously, given the model) or even any external peripherals. I admit I haven't gone the path of trying to setup an OS recovery boot disk and playing with it there. I'm sort of loathe to mess with it right now because it seems tremendously erratic trying to get it back operating normal and I need this machine over the next few days.

I'm kind of wondering if anyone else has seen any flakiness with external displays on Retina MBP's after the last round of updates, or if there were any video driver updates in the last releases...

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