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thunderbolt display goes black, forcing manual restart

I have a 27" TB display with AMD FirePro D500 3072 MB Graphics connected to my MacPro (2013) on El Capitan (v. 10.11.3). The TB Firmware is up to date.


Occasionally, while in Safari, the TB display will unexpectedly go black and stay there. I have to power down the MP manually and then reboot. I used to think this was a Parallels problem (where I was running a virtual Windows 10 machine), so I have shut down Parallels unless I specifically have to use Windows. Today, with Parallels shut down, while logging into a website (msevensoftware.com), the TB display went black. Again I had to manually shut down the MP, then restart to clear.

Thunderbolt Display (27-inch), OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on May 5, 2016 9:33 AM

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Posted on May 6, 2016 6:03 PM

Update your Mac to v10.11.4.


Click your Apple  top left in your screen.


From the drop down menu click Software Update


Your Mac may restart several times during the update process. That's normal.



If the screen still goes back after the update, reset the System Management Controller (SMC)

8 replies

May 16, 2016 1:05 PM in response to Carolyn Samit

Thanks, Carolyn. I did the software update, and that was no problem. When this happened again a few days later (screen went black and I had to manually shut down and restart), I then did the SMC reset. Fine, for two weeks. It happened again today. It always happens in Safari (today, in eBay, which is unusual, since I hardly ever go to that website).

Jun 18, 2016 10:59 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

I did all this (in fact, I'm now on 10.11.5 OS X). The problem seemed to go away, but it re-occurred yesterday, and again today. I have absolutely nothing plugged into the TB Display. It's gone from inconvenient to annoying. Yesterday, I was not online, but using Adobe Lightroom. Today, I was online and responding to a Facebook post. There doesn't seem to be any consistent pattern to this problem.

Jul 11, 2016 9:37 AM in response to tbirdvet

Thanks, tbirdvet! The issue did not present itself again since your email of June 18 until today. I was not using my Mac Pro for anything (downloading a software update on my MP Pro); in fact, I even turned off WiFi on the Mac Pro so as to give the MB Pro maximum bandwidth on our network. The TB display went dark, I pulled the plug from the back of my UPS, waited a few minutes, plugged it back in and voila`! We'll see what the future brings.


Fred

Sep 14, 2016 9:59 AM in response to tbirdvet

Still having this issue. I'm now on 10.11.6 OS. The display will go to black infrequently; sometimes I can go for a couple weeks with no issue, then it will happen two or three times a week. I unplug the display cord from the back of my MacPro, plug it back in and I'm all set (until the next time). It's sporadic, and can happen when I'm online, not online, downloading an app update, working locally. No rhyme or reason to it. Defective cord?

thunderbolt display goes black, forcing manual restart

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