[tsenecal]

Ok,

I let an idiot at work play with my mini, and this is what he did:

plugged it into his ancient 15" dell lcd monitor, brought up the display System Preference, and clicked on the "Mirror Internal Display".

the internal display on the mini 9 wigged out and started displaying dozens of vertical lines in a multitude of different colors.

now, whenever I connect ANY external display, the internal display does the same exact thing, except, it also mirrors that same wigged out display to the external display.

I have deleted the /library/preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist file, that didn't help, and I have also tried copying the same file from a mac mini with no change. the blue function keys do work as expected, they will switch the wigged out display from the internal, to the external, to both, but alas, it is always the wigged out display.

does anybody know how to fix my machine so that mirroring is turned off?

[guyincognito]

1. Open terminal
2. Type "mirroring off" (no quotes)

Try it, and let me know if it worked.

[mbp]

for me "mirroring off" gives me just this command:

-bash: mirroring: command not found

i really don't know what i'm doing wrong...:/

[tsenecal]

i typed both "mirroring off", as well as "sudo mirroring off"

and while not giving me the "command not found" error, it made no change to the original problem.

thanks for the help anyway...

[tiggr]

i think you need to enter the command when the extra display is connected

open terminal first (without 2nd screen plugged in)
type mirroring off but don't hit return
connect 2nd display
wait a few seconds then hit return and it should reset the display to two seperate screens at different resolutions

not sure what effect having deleted the plist file first will have done though

[Norin]

On a related issue, I am having trouble getting mirroring to work properly, I have 10.5.6 fully patched (as of 3/25) with the DellEFI 1.1 installed, and whenever I attach an external monitor it only shows part of the wallpaper, and not any of the dialog boxes that i am launching on my mini 9. Any help that you can provide would be awesome!

Best Regards

Steve

[DarthOverlord]

I had the same problem this past week.

Here is the solution. I used the MirrorDisplays program and Quicksilver to save the day.

http://forums.msiwind.net/mac/how-you-t ... t6266.html

[Norin]

I installed the mirrordisplay app and I am still having issues, when I enable mirroring both displays freak out like the Original Posters problem, i am able to get it to stop by tab+space and typing mirror but I cannot get my external display to work what am I doing wrong, using the displays feature from system It detects the other display with no problem, It just will not mirror. any thoughts?

[tsenecal]

ok, i plugged in a second display, with the terminal window all ready to go, when the displays started to wig-out, i hit the return key, and bingo, all is right in the world. I have two independent separate displays, and neither is wigged out

thanks

[emdc]

tigger, you da man!

This fixed a nasty problem I was having after selecting Mirror display in System Preferences.