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Multiple Displays have problems with El Capitan

I upgraded to El Capitan last week. Immediately after restarting from the install, my 2nd and 3rd monitors no longer displayed anything. It's like they were turned off. I tried restarting, but nothing changed. I then tried switching cables to different ports and seeing what would happen with just a single monitor plugged in, here's what I found.


Machine Info:

MacPro

32GB RAM

AMD FirePro D500 3072 MB Graphics


27" Apple Cinema Display (x2) using Thunderbolt

13HD Wacom Cintiq using HDMI


-------------------------

When 1 monitor was plugged in, it would work fine.

When 2 were plugged in, only the first monitor would work

It seems that changing ports made no difference, only 1 monitor would work at any given time. I also had issues with some external drives failing to mount.


I called AppleCare and they had me reset the SMC on the MacPro. This seemed to fix it until I setup my second cinema display with Apple Calendar and Apple Mail in the new split view and quit the applications without exiting SplitView first. Doing this blacked out the second Cinema display and I had to repeat the SMC reset procedure (listed below). It happened again about an hour later after a restart, I called AppleCare again and the tech led me through the SMC reset steps again and all monitors began working properly again. Within the next few hours the same problem happened again...I am now back on Yosemite until I see something indicating this problem is fixed.


I noticed that Beta users had this problem documented quite a bit on the .3 release, but I saw that the .4 release seemed to fix the issue. Well, it did not. I caught lightening in a bottle and it's happening to me.




SMC Reset Procedure

1. Shut Down computer if it's not already shut down

2. Unplug all peripherals and computer for 30 seconds

3. Plug in computer to power and one monitor

4. Start-up and check to see if monitor is working

5. If monitor is working then plug-in second display and restart


This worked for me and I was able to plug up the other peripherals.


I'm not sure why the problem persists, but everything is completely stable and operates fine on Yosemite.

Mac Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), iMac 27" 8GB i7

Posted on Oct 5, 2015 9:34 AM

Reply
156 replies

Mar 19, 2016 10:27 AM in response to Waveform2

@ Waveform2 - sorry you're having so much difficulty with your iMac and external display. I have recently upgraded all my iMacs and 1 MacBook to El Capitan. One of the iMacs (27" 2009) had the issue of non-response to HDMI, but later resolved itself after disconnecting everything and slowly adding back all the other peripherals.


I have 2 other iMacs, one 27" 2010, and one 21" 2011 - both are running an external HDMI monitor at 1080p using El Capitan without issues.


If you can, shutdown the computer and disconnect everything from the back except for your keyboard or mouse if they are hard wired. Restart your iMac and immediately hold down the shift key to boot into 'safe mode.' Let the computer complete it's start-up routine completely, then try plugging in your Mini Display HMDI adapter and see if it works. If so, restart the iMac (normal - not safe mode) again without any other things connected. If the monitor is still working ok, then add the other peripherals - starting with hard drives first.


This procedure has worked for me when one of my iMacs showed the issue you're describing.


Dan

Mar 21, 2016 8:21 AM in response to Waveform2

Just adding my voice of frustration. I need two external monitors to work (Bloomberg terminals) and the upgrade now has forced me to use my mac air to do work while I run my macbook pro for Bloomberg. Oh and forget about sharing docs now across the platform. How many months does this have to go on?


Two monitors, one USB and one firewire. Firewire works great regardless of which monitor so obviously it isn't the monitor but the USB. The port works well with other peripherals. Did the reset, even wiped clean the BOTH macs and no good. This is unacceptable to have a performance issue like this go on this long.

Mar 22, 2016 5:27 AM in response to Waveform2

Any news if 11.1.4 fixes the multiple monitor problem? (I have a new mac pro, 2 x D700, 32GB RAM, 2 x DELL2715H - connected via thunderbolt, 32TB Thunderbolt RAID, Blackmagic thunderbolt to SDI converter). I tried 11.1.3 and that didn't work - only one monitor would show unless I unplugged everything else. So I'm stuck on 10.10.5 cos that works.


TIA

Ziggy

Mar 22, 2016 12:42 PM in response to ziggx

My situation is I have a new Mid-2015 MBP 15" and two external 22" ASUS displays connected by Thunderbolt to HDMI cables. I've only had this for a few days so I'm still trying to characterize this issue but for me, if I boot up the MBP by itself (neither Thunderbolt cable plugged in) then plug them in, the displays work fine (so far). If I put the computer to sleep (such as when I walk away till it times out or when I return to work in the morning) and try to revive the displays, the laptop and one of the displays lights up and stays fine. The 2nd ASUS randomly blacks out for 1-5 seconds and then turns on again. It's annoying as heck!


Rebooting the laptop with the cables attached doesn't fix the problem.

Just installed the latest El Capitan OS X update 10.11.4 and it doesn't fix the problem in my case.

When I unplugged the thunderbolt cables and rebooted, then plugged them back in, so far it's working fine. No issues.

Mar 22, 2016 1:53 PM in response to Waveform2

I'm trying another theory now as there are others in our company using almost the same configuration (MBP + 2 displays) and who aren't having or at least haven't reported any issues yet like mine. They use one Thunderbold and the HDMI port on the MBP. So I got an HDMI-HDMI cable and plugged that in for my "bad" display. So far it's working flawlessly. But the acid test is when I return after a solid sleep such as overnight. I'll report back if that is my "fix".

Another option is that one of my Thunderbold-HDMI cables is bad. I will verify that next if this HDMI-HDMI cable proves to be working solid. I have a Thunderbolt-HDMI dongle that I can re-use the same HDMI cable to the display and also allows using the 2nd Thunderbolt port to see if the cable was bad or not. Hopefully what I just said is not confusing.

Mar 28, 2016 1:40 PM in response to teaman2

It appears that one of the HDMI-HDMI cables (of the two I ordered) was bad. I have returned it to Amazon. I'm now using a Thunderbolt-DVI cable to my 2nd monitor (it's what I had on hand) and all is well. No issues using my two ASUS 22" displays and my MBP laptop screen open as a third smaller screen.


I may have been able to get a replacement HDMI-HDMI cable but opted to go with the proven cable I had on hand that works fine.

Apr 5, 2016 2:42 PM in response to Mattzda3

In case you are using USB display adapter you should download display drivers on the following link: http://www.displaylink.com/downloads/osx

I had the same issue after I install El Capitan on my Imac. I had one screen on thunderbolt and another screen on USB port. The screen on thunderbolt worked but the one on USB port didn't work. After I install USB display drivers now both works.

Multiple Displays have problems with El Capitan

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