Screen Resolution Changes After Sleep

I have recently purchased an external monitor that I am connecting to my MacBook Pro (Late 2009) using the MiniDisplay-to-VGA adapter. I have both the external monitor and the MacBook's monitor set to 'Best Available' resolution in OS X Lion. Whenever the computer 'wakes up' from its sleeping state, the resolution setting for the external monitor is 'forgotten'. Every time the computer 'wakes up', the resolution of the external monitor is set to match the MacBook's monitor.

The only reason I am using the VGA cable rather than a DVI cable, is because I do not have the MiniDisplay-to-DVI adapter. Will switching to DVI solve the problem? Is there any known way to solve this issue other than getting a utility to reset the resolution manually every time?

Thanks.

I have a dell vostro 1400 with Vista OS and after it has been in the sleep state it can come back up with the wrong screen resolution, and a pop-up. Hibernate Changes Screen Resolution I got the laptop (my first) described in the tagline last week. When it goes into sleep or hibernate the screen resolution is changed to a low value with the wrong aspect ratio. The screen resolution on my Vostro 1700 automatically resizes itself to 640x480 after it comes out of hibernate or sleep mode. I reloaded the drivers months ago, but it didn't work, and I have just been putting up with it since then.

Christian CorreaChristian Correa
2,5295 gold badges16 silver badges32 bronze badges

7 Answers

I recommend you reset your NVRAM. This chip stores information on screen resolution and can often become corrupted. You can reset it by starting your Mac while holding down cmd + opt + P + R . You should hear the Mac chime, restart and chime a second time. Then you can release the keys you are holding. More info here.

bispymusicbispymusic

I found an easy way around this and I hope it helps people. I tried resetting the NVRAM and it did not help. I am pretty sure it is due to flaw in the OS upgrade.

Here is the fix. Set up video so that when you move to the top left corner, the video shuts off. When you come out of sleep, if the resolution is low, move the mouse to the top left to shut the video off. If you left click the mouse in the position, it should reset the optimal resolution as it does with my MacBook Pro 15'

Undo
1,6017 gold badges20 silver badges42 bronze badges
Jack DeMemberJack DeMember

Screen Resolution Changes After Sleep Mode

I found a super easy fix for when this happens to me. My external monitor is plugged into a power strip and if I flip the power of the strip off and then back on again the external monitor shows me options for display resolution if I am in display preferences on my Macbook Pro (Mid 2010). I hope this helps.

Dave HuishDave Huish

Well none of this worked for me. This is what I did before I found the issue.

After the computer would come back on after sleep (macbook pro mavericks, screaming computer with 8gigs ram, retina) the right side monitor, out of the 2 monitors I have plugged in by VGA->DVI, continued to be reset from 1600x900 to 800x600. I would:

  • Unplug the DVI port from the mac. No luck.
  • Unplug and power off the monitor, turn back and on and plug back in. No luck.
  • Unplug, power off monitor, restart mac, plug back in, and then power back on. No luck.
  • Go to display settings, push Option to get 'Detect Displays', clicked, no change.
  • Turn everything off, restart computer while pushing Command + Option + P + R, turn everything back on, plug back in... STILL not resetting back to best display for that monitor.

Needless to say I was getting pretty frustrated. Until I thought, what about unplugging the VGA from the DVI adaptor? Well I did that, connected back together and voila, screen reset.

After

So to anyone that has this problem in the future, it could be something in the actual DVI adaptor that could be having the issue too! If all fails, try unplugging the adaptor from your monitor cable and see if that works. It did for me.

Paul CarltonPaul Carlton

I had a similar problem with an iMac from 2009, my second display is connected via a firewire-to-VGA adapter. I tried everything to fix this issues, reseting the nvram worked after a reboot but the next time the monitor 'slept' the problem occured again.When i tried to set the resolution manually my resolution (1920x1080) was not listed, even when holding the 'option' key to show more resolutions.

Screen Resolution Changes After Sleep

I found a solution on this post by Andreas Schwarz on embdev.net (see the link in his code bellow, i can't post more than 2 links)It's was not directly intended to correct the problem, but it does with me.

The problem can be solved by overriding the EDID data of the display in order to tell OS X that the display only supports RGB. This can be done by reading the EDID with 'ioreg -l', modifying the offending bits (see the specification in the Wikipedia article), and creating a display config override file for OS X.

He then provided a ruby script to create this override file :

Executing this script in the terminal with 'ruby patch-edid.rb' creates a folder named 'DisplayXXX'

move the contained folder into /System/Library/Displays/Overrides. After a reboot, the monitor should show that RGB colors are used.

After rebooting the resolution was not correct, but i was able to set the correct one in the display settings.

ulk200ulk200

Hadn't seen this solution anywhere which worked for me and a coworker. Check to see if there are any updates for your mac. I had a security update that I was not aware of so I updated and restarted without my monitor connected and it started up just fine.

dylan verburgtdylan verburgt

Go Displays in System Preferences. Then turn off 'Show mirroring options in the menu bar when available'.

grg
141k25 gold badges225 silver badges334 bronze badges
sehoseho
Changes

You must log in to answer this question.

protected by CommunityJul 30 '18 at 11:05

Thank you for your interest in this question. Because it has attracted low-quality or spam answers that had to be removed, posting an answer now requires 10 reputation on this site (the association bonus does not count).
Would you like to answer one of these unanswered questions instead?

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged macbookdisplaysleep-wakeresolution .