[mkral]

I have a 12" powerbook (1.5 gig). I use it on the road every day & then plug it into an external 17" monitor & use it with the lid closed when I'm back at the office. It seems like lately about 1/3 of the time, when I hook it up to the monitor & turn it on, I just get a blue screen & no activity. The only way to get it out of the blue screen is a restart. It becomes completely unusable.

I generally put it to sleep when I'm done using it & then when I get to the office, I plug in the power cord & monitor & then hit the spacebar on my bluetooth keyboard to wake it up. Am I doing something wrong? How do I get this setup to work more frequently.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Mark

[MacPowerbookG4]

Hi Mark,

I also use an external screen everyday with my Powerbook G4. I assume that you are using an external keyboard and mouse. If you hit the spacebar or click the mouse a few times, the computer should awake from sleep mode. Let me know exactly how you're connecting the external monitor to your laptop. Are you connecting via VGA or DVI?

[mkral]

I'm connecting via VGA. I do hit the spacebar or mouse a couple of times & it usually works (bluetooth external mouse & keyboard) but some of the time it turns on, but it seems like the powerbook doesn't recognize the external monitor. It lights up to a solid bllue, but nothing else ever happens. I've left it alone for as long as 5 minutes, hoping that it was just slow to wake bp, but no joy.

[MacPowerbookG4]

Have you configured your display settings in system preferences? Also, what resolution are you running on your external monitor?