It happened few days ago for the first time: after opening the lid on my MacBook Pro, the machine woke up, but the screen stayed dark. Whatever I did, I just could see cursor and nothing underneath. I had to resort to unthinkable - reboot :-(

Some research showed this is known problem - which is from certain point of view good, because many people found hopefully many workarounds. The more information can be found here, here and here. Very helpfull was also this page.

There are speculations about some software that may be related to the problem. As matter of fact, I have installed after some time of not using it one of the suspects: iStat Pro dashboard widget.

What I have done to minimize chances of reoccurence:

- removed the iStat Pro and Polar Clock screen saver (which was also new install)
- switched off the setting 'Automatically reduce the brightness of the display before sleep'
- started to switch off the bluetooth mouse before closing the lid (so that BT is off when sleeping)

I have also switched off the "safe sleep" mode which is not of much use as my notebook never stays unopened for longer that 12 hours :-).

So far, everything works OK. Let's keep the fingers' crossed ...