Snow Leopard killed my vga displays!!

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This is by far the most weird problem I have ever encountered after upgrading to a new OS.

I run a company where we have something like 15 different Macs. Mostly Intel, but different ages, Mac Pro, Macbook Pro, iMacs, Mac Mini etc.

A couple of days ago I wanted to upgrade one of the Mac Pros to Snow Leopard. It's an early 2008 3.1 with ATI hd 2600 graphics. I wanted to do a clean install, but instead of backing up everything from the system drive, I pulled it out and put in a new clean one. This way I could retrieve the data from the old drive when I need it through a USB docking station or something.

Installation went by fast and without any problems what so ever.

But first thing I noticed when the first bootup was completed was that the resolution of my monitors were suddenly completely wrong. I have two Samsung Syncmaster 2343nw monitors connected through vga, and they have always been detected and automatically been set to the correct resolution in the display preferences dialog by the old Leopard. I have around 9 of these monitors working as dual displays on Leopard machines, and a few working as extra external monitors for a couple of Macbook Pros running both Snow Leopard and Leopard. They are all connected via an dvi to vga converter and they always get detected correctly as "Syncmaster" in Display preferences.

But suddenly now, they just show up as "VGA Monitor" in Display preferences.
After fighting with this for a couple of hours trying all the suggested workarounds I could find, zapping PRAM deleting /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist changing the cables and so on, I finaly gave up. Fortunately I didn't overwrite the old Leopard installation so of cause I could just swap the drives back and everything should be dandy after booting back into the old Leopard install.

But **** no! Now the resolution was equally messed up in Leopard! And none of the two monitors were detected as "Syncmaster" in display pref. Now they only show up as "VGA Monitor" as they did in Snow. ***?? How can an OS mess with a monitors plug 'n' play capabilities?

I then tried the obvious which was to try and reset the monitors, remove power from them, Zap the PRAM again. I even tried a different graphics card (that didn't work in this machine) but what ever I did, the monitors where no longer detectable by the OS.

Next step was to take some identical monitors from a different machine. And yes, they where detected by Leopard on the problem machine. Since I couldn't believe that Snow had actually ruined the other two monitors I booted back into Snow hooping that it would now detect these other identical monitors. But no, same problem. Back to Leopard, and once again now suddenly these couldn't be detected by Leopard either.

I have since tried these monitors on all the other Macs I have in the company, and only one machine with an nVidia card is able to detect them correctly as Syncmaster. But none the less also this machine isn't able to see the monitors native resolution thus making it impossible to select the right setting for the monitor.

So now I have 4 monitors that's virtually unusable after being in contact

I have read a lot about people who who suddenly can't use their secondary monitor after upgrading to Snow Leopard and that Apple is aware of this, and that 10.6.4 should address this problem when we finally get some new graphic drivers. But I haven't heard about anybody who's monitor lost it's plug 'n' play capabilities after being in contact with Snow Leopard.

But maybe someone here has had any similar experience? Maybe somebody else has had luck with upgrading a dual vga monitor system to Snow Leopard? I would love to get some ideas on what happened since these monitors doesn't really work anymore on any computer.

Thanks!
 

chscag

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Have you tried hooking the monitors from the Mac Pro via DVI? I have had problems in the past with Samsung Syncmaster monitors when hooked up directly as VGA. As a matter of fact I'm using one right now from my home office - but as DVI. Using a direct VGA hookup to the monitor from a PC works fine but does not work well or sometimes not at all from my MacBook.

Just a WAG.

Regards.
 

bobtomay

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I was hoping you'd have something better when I saw you replied chscag. Have seen this same issue reported repeatedly with Samsung and fairly often with ViewSonic monitors.
 
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This is by far the most weird problem I have ever encountered after upgrading to a new OS.

I run a company where we have something like 15 different Macs. Mostly Intel, but different ages, Mac Pro, Macbook Pro, iMacs, Mac Mini etc.

A couple of days ago I wanted to upgrade one of the Mac Pros to Snow Leopard. It's an early 2008 3.1 with ATI hd 2600 graphics. I wanted to do a clean install, but instead of backing up everything from the system drive, I pulled it out and put in a new clean one. This way I could retrieve the data from the old drive when I need it through a USB docking station or something.

Installation went by fast and without any problems what so ever.

But first thing I noticed when the first bootup was completed was that the resolution of my monitors were suddenly completely wrong. I have two Samsung Syncmaster 2343nw monitors connected through vga, and they have always been detected and automatically been set to the correct resolution in the display preferences dialog by the old Leopard. I have around 9 of these monitors working as dual displays on Leopard machines, and a few working as extra external monitors for a couple of Macbook Pros running both Snow Leopard and Leopard. They are all connected via an dvi to vga converter and they always get detected correctly as "Syncmaster" in Display preferences.

But suddenly now, they just show up as "VGA Monitor" in Display preferences.
After fighting with this for a couple of hours trying all the suggested workarounds I could find, zapping PRAM deleting /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist changing the cables and so on, I finaly gave up. Fortunately I didn't overwrite the old Leopard installation so of cause I could just swap the drives back and everything should be dandy after booting back into the old Leopard install.

But **** no! Now the resolution was equally messed up in Leopard! And none of the two monitors were detected as "Syncmaster" in display pref. Now they only show up as "VGA Monitor" as they did in Snow. ***?? How can an OS mess with a monitors plug 'n' play capabilities?

I then tried the obvious which was to try and reset the monitors, remove power from them, Zap the PRAM again. I even tried a different graphics card (that didn't work in this machine) but what ever I did, the monitors where no longer detectable by the OS.

Next step was to take some identical monitors from a different machine. And yes, they where detected by Leopard on the problem machine. Since I couldn't believe that Snow had actually ruined the other two monitors I booted back into Snow hooping that it would now detect these other identical monitors. But no, same problem. Back to Leopard, and once again now suddenly these couldn't be detected by Leopard either.

I have since tried these monitors on all the other Macs I have in the company, and only one machine with an nVidia card is able to detect them correctly as Syncmaster. But none the less also this machine isn't able to see the monitors native resolution thus making it impossible to select the right setting for the monitor.

So now I have 4 monitors that's virtually unusable after being in contact

I have read a lot about people who who suddenly can't use their secondary monitor after upgrading to Snow Leopard and that Apple is aware of this, and that 10.6.4 should address this problem when we finally get some new graphic drivers. But I haven't heard about anybody who's monitor lost it's plug 'n' play capabilities after being in contact with Snow Leopard.

But maybe someone here has had any similar experience? Maybe somebody else has had luck with upgrading a dual vga monitor system to Snow Leopard? I would love to get some ideas on what happened since these monitors doesn't really work anymore on any computer.

Thanks!

Ive been using a samsung syncmaster with my imac with the minidvi to dvi adapator for over a month no problems. Im running snow leopard 10.6.4. Suddenly Imac no longer detects the samsung. I took the dvi adaptor back thinking maybe it was that but it wasnt. Ive tried everything from rebooting unplugging etc but still nothing. I have no idea what to do. Did you fix yours?
 

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