Mac – Making a Mac Mini mid-2007 able to display 2560×1440 in 2D work

Finally figured this out. The issue had to do with the fact that I am using multiple users and Fast User Switching.

You can read more details about it in this thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2177922&start=15&tstart=0

The gist is that each user has it's own loginwindow process running. These multiple loginwindow process' reek havoc with any method of remote controlling the mac -VNC, Apple Remote Desktop, LogMeIn even unplugging/plugging in a monitor is affected.

So you need to kill all loginwindow processes before connecting.

To do this:

1. Connect via ssh
2. issue a ps auxwww|grep loginwindow to find the current loginwindow processes that are running - there will be one for each user + one for console
3. for each process call sudo kill -9 pid where pid is the process id

* note: you do not need to kill the loginwindow for console

Much thanks to Martin Marconcini who led me down the path of investigating the running processes via SSH.

my 2008 santa rosa 2.2GHz MacBook Pro has suffered both the graphic chip problem (no picture on screen but accessible through screen sharing apps or ext monitor), and the trackpad cable problem (no response from keyboard or trackpad although ext mouse and keyboard function ok). Both are common faults on this model. Graphics prob repairable under the special warranty extension from Apple. Trackpad cable fairly easy using ifixit.com guide.

When my graphics card was in broken mode, (it was intermittent), it would not show up in the Graphics/Displays section of System Information (Lion); the Intel chipset would show up there instead; so thus you can check if you have the graphics chip (poor solderflow) problem. It would however give me the output to an external monitor ok (?!*)

It sounds as though you might have suffered both at the same time...although your ext mouse should work(?!*)