Lost second monitor

[Steve56303]

Hello,

I'm using 10.5.2 on a dual quad core with a Radeon X1900 video card. Main monitor is a Cinema display, second one is a 17" HP that I use for e-mail. Everything used to work fine.

SD backup to an OWC firewire drive seemed to go well. Booted fine, and my apps worked.

However, checking the boot off of the firewire drive, the second monitor was blank. Not "dead", as in a dark room one can tell that it is on, but no info on it.

I tried re-seating all the cables. Re-booting, etc. No luck. The monitor doesn't have any controls to speak of (power, volume)

In System Prefs>Displays>Arrangement the system thinks that the second monitor is there, but when I try to drag a window onto it nothing shows up.

I unhooked the monitor and plugged it into my laptop just to make sure it wasn't a weird timing coincidence, but the monitor works fine on the laptop.

Now the funny part (not haha funny) - when I boot off of my internal drive now the second monitor does the same thing. It's blank, and I cannot get it to work.

I am sure that the only thing I did was run SD between everything being fine and losing the second monitor.

It might be that the second port on my video card decided to die, but this seems unlikely as the main monitor works fine.

Any ideas? Suggestions?

Thanks.

[dnanian]

Since we don't actually touch your monitor, and don't write to anything on the source drive, I can't see how this can be much other than a (bad) coincidence, unfortunately...

[Steve56303]

Originally Posted by dnanian

Since we don't actually touch your monitor, and don't write to anything on the source drive, I can't see how this can be much other than a (bad) coincidence, unfortunately...

That's what I assumed, but the timing sure was odd. It worked when I was selecting the Firewire drive to boot from, and then didn't work after that drive booted - a span of about 90 seconds. Nothing else changed.

Oh well - thanks for the reply.

[arossphoto]

I'm experiencing something very similar. I ran SD on my MacBook Pro for the first time last night since upgrading to Leopard, and set the preferences to shut down the system when finished. I also had my external monitor plugged in and both displays where on when SD was running and I went to bed.

This morning I woke up and everything was shut down, so I unplugged the external monitor and the FW drive and turned on the laptop to quickly check my email before work.

The laptop display came on for a second and then went black. I waited a long time to see if it would eventually come on, but nothing happened. It looked to me like the machine had not booted up, but as I leaned in to power it up again I noticed the HD was spinning.

So I plugged-in the external monitor, and my desktop appear on it. I went to display preferences and everything appeared fine, but I could not get the laptop display to come on.

I shut down and unplugged everything again, but when I powered up the display went black again and I could not get it to come on.

Could this be a coincidence? The timing seems very strange.

Thanks,

Andrew

[dnanian]

I do this it's likely a coincidence. We really don't write to your source drive except to our log... however, realize that your Mac will be shut down with the screen off due to the fact that it has 'timed out' for Energy Saver. It's quite possible that Leopard doesn't handle its own dimming properly.

Adjusting the brightness of the display should bring it 'back'.

[arossphoto]

Originally Posted by dnanian

It's quite possible that Leopard doesn't handle its own dimming properly.

Adjusting the brightness of the display should bring it 'back'.

Holy crap... You gotta be kidding me! Thank you, thank you, thank you! All I had to do was adjust the brightness and everything is fine again. I was really worried something serious had gone wrong.

Cheers,

Andrew

[dnanian]

Glad you're all set, Andrew: sometimes the simplest answers are hard to see.