• Apple OS X

  Intel Mac tower boots, but displays won’t come up

  Posted by Matt Bradbury on December 29, 2010 at 6:49 pm

  I have a late 2008 Intel Mac tower, 8-core model. Added a few upgrades late this summer: 4gb more memory and eSATA card. Computer has been running rock solid since 2008, even after the upgrades, never a single issue.

  Now all of a sudden the monitors simply won’t come on at all. I hit the power, can audibly hear the system booting normally, and can verify that the system has booted by hitting various key commands when OS X should be at the desktop. I can also use key commands to then shut the system down again.

  To verify that it isn’t an issue with the monitors, I swapped out the 2 20″ cinema displays with a 23″ Asus display I was using on a nearby PC. After one reboot, the Asus display came up, and I was able to hot swap the cables and get the cinema displays to come back up. This worked once or twice.

  Now, I’m back from being away for the holidays and I sit down and try my Asus trick again: no dice this time. Now no matter what I plug, unplug, swap or type, I can’t get anything on any monitor.

  Any ideas on what could cause this issue? Bad video card? Something worse?

  Thanks for any advice!

  Matt

  Matt Bradbury replied 15 years, 8 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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