Troubleshooting MacBook Pro Screen Saver Issue After Upgrading To Lion

Troubleshooting MacBook Pro Screen Saver Issue After Upgrading To Lion

Troubleshooting MacBook Pro Screen Saver Issue After Upgrading To Lion

A few months back I upgraded my MacBook Pro to OS X Lion and in the weeks and months to follow I began noticing that my screen saver would come on no matter what — even when the computer wasn't idle. It was by far the weirdest bug I have ever seen and it even had numerous Apple Care techs stumped.

I first noticed the glitch when I was watching a movie on my MacBook and the screen saver would just abruptly come on. Basically if my screen saver was set to come on every 15 minutes — it would come on at that interval like it or not regardless of what I was doing. I made  numerous calls to Apple where they had me do a laundry list of tasks from deleting preferences then restoring preferences, testing hot corners and reinstalling Lion. Finally after baffling my last Apple Care advisor that I spoke with, I took my computer to the Apple store thinking it might be a hardware issue. The techs at the Apple store were all equally at a loss, but eventually the issue was spotted in the Apples forums.

After all the tests (and interrupted videos), it was a simple conflict with the program Air Display that I had on my machine. Air Display is app that let's you turn your iPad into an extra display for your Mac. I had originally installed it way before I upgraded to Lion and only used a handful times, probably as to why I pretty much forget about it. So in short, the bug basically exists if there's any third-party video driver installed on a mid-2010 15” and 17” MacBook Pro model. Any app like Air Display that uses a video driver will cause this issue with Lion. So after months of confusion, simply uninstalling Air Display solved the issue. Check out this link for more information.