# 2011 Mac mini on Mountain Lion - Freezing when attached displays are power cycled



## audibleBLiNK (May 22, 2012)

Setup: 2011 i5 Mac mini attached to a Yamaha RX-A700 outputting to a Sharp LE632U

I initially thought this was the "Best resolution for display" setting misinterpreting the res when turning off my AV equipment. In System Preferences, I disabled this and have set it for 1080p, then 1080i. Every time I turn off the AV equipment for a few hours and come back, when I turn it on, it's stuck on that blue screen that flashes when you connect an external display on any Mac. The TV also indicates that it's at 1 resolution lower than what I happened to set it to before I turned it off.

That is to say:
1080p becomes 1080i
1080i becomes 720p

Background processes still work, I can still SSH in. Screen Sharing or vnc DO NOT work, which I find odd.

Anyway, hoping someone else out there has seen something like this. All worked well in Lion.

Additional Details:

No power-saving features are enabled (sleep, etc)
No screen-savers are enabled


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## mechman (Feb 8, 2007)

Did you get this figured out?


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## audibleBLiNK (May 22, 2012)

Nope. Still happens. 

All sleeping and power management is turned off.
Nothing peculiar in /var/logs/system.log other than 'new display detected/detached' when AV power is cycled.

I'd have bought an HDMI Detective by now if it always did this, but I didn't need it before Mountain Lion, so there must be something else I can do.

I'm almost to the point of using a STB as a client for Plex as my main device and just leaving the Mac mini headless. Or buying an hdmi detective.


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## nova (Apr 30, 2006)

No help for your either. I had external monitor issues after upgrading from Snow Leopard to Lion, after a few updates it finally started working reasonably well. Have not made the change to Mountain Lion, don't want all the hassle again.


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## nigel_pearson_au (Dec 10, 2009)

I don't use my Mini for HTPC, and haven't upgraded to 10.8 yet, but would advise:

1) When it is hanged, SSH in and have a look at system.log. _e.g._

```
tail /var/log/system.log
```
2) Use a HDMI buffer and decoder (like the HDfury) to force a stable HDMI device to be on the Mac's output.


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