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When I'm at work I have my Macbook Air mid-2013 hooked up to a Samsung SyncMaster 2443 display via a ThunderBolt-to-HDMI adapter and then to a HDMI-to-DVI adapter.

Almost every second time I switch the display on, the display is just noise. The resolution is correctly detected but the display is like this:

If this happened only when I first connect the display, it would be no problem, but it happens almost every time I lock my mac, and I have to power cycle the display 2-3 times to fix it.

Note that this behaviour has been present since Maverics, it's not new in Yosemite.

Is there a fix for this?

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  • reducing the number of adaptors would be my first try.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Dec 12, 2014 at 8:57
  • agreed, check your cables contacts when that happens
    – Ruskes
    Commented Dec 12, 2014 at 10:10
  • I use the display with the HDMI->DVI converter with another laptop and the Macbook Air with the TB->HDMI converter with multiple other displays, no problems. So it can't be a faulty converter, but the combination of the two can be a problem. Will try to get a straight TB->DVI adapter for testing.
    – aleksikallio
    Commented Dec 12, 2014 at 10:13
  • I got the same issue out of the blue. MBP 2015 with Samsung S24E310, thunderbolt-DVI adapter to DVI-HDMI cable. The very same setup worked without any issues more than a year. Now several times a week the external display switches to this colour noise during casual work (not sleep/wakeup). Have to turn monitor off/on to fix. Very annoying.
    – Konstantin Suvorov
    Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 13:59
  • Similar problem with Samsung TV, M1 Big Sur. Seems the macbook hdmi gets stuck with samsung tv HDMI when in sleep mode. Keyboard has lights on but unable to switch to HDMI. I mitigated problem by changing macos idle sleep timeout to 3 minutes. I press a key on the lit keyboard, wait for 3 minutes for the keyboard lights to go out and then it works as expected.
    – Antti Rytsölä
    Commented Oct 8, 2023 at 11:31

1 Answer 1

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I have had the same problem with Maverick (in clamshell mode) / external monitor (Samsung SyncMaster 2443) when I lock my screen and use my bluetooth mouse or keyboard to wake up the computer.

I was able to fix the problem in 2 ways:

open the lid, login and unplu, replug the external monitor (pretty annoying) when the multicolor static shows, press CTRL+SHIFT+Eject as if to lock the computer again, then wake up the computer again and I now have the normal login screen as normal (not ideal but less disruptive solution).

I hope this helps !

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