While playing Postal 2 on my MacBook Pro something froze to the point where a hard reset was necessary. After it booted I noticed my external monitor (Dell UltraSharp 21") went to the same resolution as the 15" screen on the MacBook. Its native resolution is much higher (1680x1050) so the picture is grainy at best. I plugged the monitor in to a PC and it detects at the higher res so I know the monitor works. I have tried a factory reset on the monitor and tried letting System Preferences re-detect displays. It treats the external as if it were identical to the built in monitor. How can I get the Mac to re-recognize the monitor at its native resolution?
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hmmmm. Have you tried it in safe mode? Have you tried connecting the display un powered while the mbp is running and then turning the display on? Another idea might be to repair permissions again and then manually reapply the 10.5.2 update. Do you have boot camp running a linux or windows partition? Are you running any VM versions of the same? Anyway, try those and I will chew on this a bit. My wife has my MBP with her. I have some ideas about using some of the open GL developer's tools that are new with Leopard. You would have had to of already installed these when you setup the installation or will have to go back to your install dvd as you have to custom choose these tools. I know we can play with vsync as a major change event (though Apple calls it something else). Also, in the meantime, try this
1. open any document in Preview (Applications folder)
2. view it in slideshow mode (View -> Slideshow; shift-apple-F)
3. hit "esc" to exit slideshow mode
This has had a resetting effect for other display issues on MBP's
K my Mac is back. Anyhow, I am new to this app myself but in the performance tools folder there is a little app called Quartz Debugger. It has a couple of little tweaking features that may shake this issue loose if it is software. In beam sync tools you can try toggling between automatic and force on or off to shake things up. You could try toggling the user interface resolution feature. You could try enabling quartz gl as well. I hope one of these things works as i am a little nervous about your hardware.
http://developer.apple.com
http://arstechnica.com/rev
http://forums.macrumors.co
This last link shows the location of the core graphic plist just in case you might want to try renaming it to force Os x to replace it.
Finally, if the answer is no to the boot camp or vm questions, do you have a firewire drive handy to install a minimal base leopard installation from which to boot the machine?
What is your result if you try to use your Virtual XP installation with the second display. O and by the way i was going all old school on you. Since you have an Intel Mac, you can boot from a USB 2.0 drive. If you have 20 Gb or so of free space you can make a temporary (or permanent) partition and load a bootable basic OS X leopard install from your original 10.5.1 DVD. If you don't want to mess with Time Machine you can use something like iPartition http://www.coriolis-system
I have the exact same issue sometimes. I find I cannot startup the macbook with the external monitor plugged in because it will take the resolution of the LCD. However, if I boot up, then plugin the monitor (after logging in), I get 1680x1050 no problem.
Drives me crazy, but I haven't figured out a way around it.
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by: pheidiusPosted on 2008-02-19 at 09:56:39ID: 20930760
You might try changing the display preferences from mirror to span and then back again or vice versa and see if this helps. Also try temporarily pulling the little white control strip to the other display and then back again. You also might want to reset the pram by rebooting holding down the command, option, p, and r keys at the same time until it boot chimes twice. Follow this by repairing disk permissions while booted from your original diskwith disk utility and also use it to check the drive for any errors. If none of the above works then download switchrezx and use it to force the issue. http://www.madrau.com/