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Extra screen turns black randomly

Hello,


I recently started to get an strange behavior on my Macbook Pro. I work using 2 extra screens connect to my Macbook, and all the time one of this screend turns black randomly.


The Macbook pro is an 2018 Intel Core I5, 16GB and 500GB storage, no touch bar, using High Sierra. This model of Macbook pro only have 2 USB-C port, so one of the ports I have one of the screens connect with HDMI to USB-C, on the other port I have an dock where i connect the USB-C charger, Keyboard/Mouse and another HDMI.


The problem started when I start to use the second extra screen, and I have this problem happening between 10 and 20 times during an 8 hours day.


I tried several approaches to reduce this problem:


- Reduce the screens resolution: don't worked.

- Turned off night shift: don't worked.

- Removed keyboard/mouse form dock, leaving only charger and screen: don't worked.

- Change cables: Don't worked.

- Removed the charger cable from dock: Reduced the black screen but didn't stoped.


So I started to track the system msgs with "dmesg" command and I noted that every black screen the follow msg shows up:


[IGFB][ERROR
] Link loss occurred on port 1

[IGFB][ERROR
] Recovering DP link (2)

[IGFB][INFO
] FB1: Complete modeset

When I disconnect the charger cable the same "[IGFB][INFO
] FB1: Complete modeset " msgs also shows up, so I started to believe if is not a problem with the Macbook charging and transfering data in the same USB-C.

Anyone with the same problems ? Any ideas on how to fix it ?

MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, 4 TBT3)

Posted on May 25, 2018 8:47 AM

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3 replies

May 28, 2018 5:49 AM in response to FullDev

That dock says "no driver required", so it is not using DisplayLink software, whose most recent version has issues.


I suggest you contact the seller or manufacturer, to see if they can help. I suggest you ask them for a replacement unit to try, as yours seem to be having problems.


There should be no conflict with charging, as it only requires a tiny transaction on USB to set up, then does not use data portion of ThunderBolt after that.

Extra screen turns black randomly

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