[MPMoriarty]

Lately, my iBook G4 running Panther has been acting weird.

I will close the lid and it will go to sleep. The little white light will pulse in front. When I go to open it up and use it again, the screen doesn't come back on and it appears like it is still sleeping. I have to end up rebooting the computer in order for it to work again.

Now this doesn't happen all the time, but it is starting to become more frequent. It never has done this in the past.

Is this a standard iBook G4 problem, or should I send my iBook off to Apple to be looked at?

Mike

[Kelvin]

I've got a 14" iBook about a month old. I updated to 10.3.4 after about a week of use. So far it's fine for sleep. Always wakes up. I have the system prompt me for a password when it wakes up so I don't know if that makes a difference. I have Automatic set in the Energy Saver control panel.

I've read of others having this issue, here and in the Apple discussions on Apple's website.

Kelvin

[awaspaas]

Originally posted by MPMoriarty:
Lately, my iBook G4 running Panther has been acting weird.

I will close the lid and it will go to sleep. The little white light will pulse in front. When I go to open it up and use it again, the screen doesn't come back on and it appears like it is still sleeping. I have to end up rebooting the computer in order for it to work again.

Now this doesn't happen all the time, but it is starting to become more frequent. It never has done this in the past.

Is this a standard iBook G4 problem, or should I send my iBook off to Apple to be looked at?

Mike

Still under warranty right? Wouldn't hurt to send it in if it is. Turnaround is usually quite quick. Back up your data first!!!

[RadarBob2]

FYI, I've had this problem too - OS 10.2.8 on a 300MHz iBook, G3. It also is intermittent, but not so frequent to be a problem.

[krrt]

I've noticed the same problem on my iBook G4 1GHz. It doesn't happen often, but maybe once every 15 times I try to wake it from sleep the pulsing light goes out but the machine never wakes up. I've ended up having to restart it with Control-Command-Power button.

I am prompted for my password when it wakes up, and I have Energy Saving set to Automatic.

Since it happens infrequently, I haven't been able to find any pattern to it. Typically, I'm only running Firefox and Mail when I put it to sleep. The problem has been present in 10.3.4 and 10.3.5. I haven't yet tried to SSH in when this happens, but I will try next time.

I haven't found anything in the crash logs that seems relevant. My 512MB DIMM is third-party, but other than this one issue I have no reason to suspect it is at fault.

[bergy]

Computer will not wake from Sleep?
Repair Disk and Permissions

1. Repair disk and permissions on your Mac OS X boot volume

Run the Repair disk and Repair Permissions processes to assure your Mac OS X boot volume, as follows.

Repair disk

This step will check for, and usually repair, any corruption on your OS X boot volume

(1) Boot from your Mac OS X Install Disc 1 CD.

(2) When the Installer window opens, select Installer > Disk Utility from the Apple® menu bar.

(3) When the Disk Utility window opens, select your Mac OS X boot volume from the list of drives and volumes in the column on the left side of the Disk Utility window.

(4) Select the First Aid tab in the Disk Utility window.

(5) Select the Repair Disk button on the First Aid tab.

If step (5) returns any errors that Disk utility can not repair, then you will need to use a third-party disk utility to repair your Mac OS X boot volume, such as Alsoft® Disk Warrior®, or either of Micromat Drive 10™ or TechTool Pro®.

(6) After Repair Disk completes, Quit (Command-Q) Disk Utility. Focus returns to the Installer.

(7) Quit (Command-Q) the Installer. When prompted, select Restart.

Repair permissions

This step will assure that permissions are correctly set on Mac OS X System components.

(1) After the Restart, proceed to log in to your Admin ID but, before pressing Return or selecting the Log In button, hold down the Shift key. Then press Return or select the Log In button while continuing to hold down the Shift key. This will log you into your ID without launching any of your Startup Items (Panther™) or Login Items (Jaguar). After your Desktop is fully displayed, release the Shift key.

(2) Launch Disk Utility via Finder™ in the Computer > Mac OS X > Applications > Utilities folder.

(3) Select your Mac OS X boot volume.

(4) Select the First Aid tab in the Disk Utility window.

(5) Select the Repair Disk Permissions button on the First Aid tab.

(6) When Repair Disk Permissions completes, Quit (Command-Q) Disk Utility.

Also for trouble free sleep
Try these energy saver settings ..
Preferences/Energy Saver
"Put the computer to sleep when it is inactive for" .. at Never
Check "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible".

In the future don't worry about permissions ... use .
Macaroni .. Just Set It and Forget It!
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9633

[krrt]

I repair permissions regularly, and run Disk Warrior periodically to take care of any directory errors. Every couple of weeks, or at signs of weirdness, I use Cocktail to run the cron scripts and delete caches. None of this seems to have an effect on my iBook not waking from sleep on occasion.

Telling the system to never sleep would likely cure any problem with the system having to wake up, but it's not much of a solution to those of us who want to conserve as much power as possible when we're on battery power. And, of course, we'd just like to see our iBooks work the way they're supposed to.

Here is some additional info: I've had this happen while plugged-in and on battery power, and both with and without USB peripherals attached.

Again, this happens to me very intermittently and so isn't that big of a deal. But it has the potential of causing data loss, and I'd like to hear if anyone has any insight into what could be causing it.

[bergy]

The computer will still sleep with those settings I gave you. Worth a try ...

[krrt]

For the first time in several weeks, it happened to me again. I was unable to connect to my iBook via SSH, nor would it respond to a ping or a magic packet (wake-on-lan). Thought this might be of interest to others encountering this problem.

[Katja]

I have a new iBook G4 and I experience the same problems with it not waking up properly from time to time and having to restart it. At first it only happened after the battery had run out but today it occured while being plugged in.

[Dr.Michael]

I don't understand what this should have to do with permissions.

Usually the wake up is triggered by a small magnet beneath the palmrest that induces a current in a coil that is located in the lidframe.
Maybe your magnet is too weak?
You can check this if you move a magnet along the lidframe while the lid is open and the iBook is asleep. If this wakes the machine its your magnet. If not it can still be a defective coil or the electronics behind it.

To work around that problem disable lidwake from the terminal with
sudo pmset lidwake 0

After this your iBook will never wake up after the lid is opened. But now you should be able to wake it up with a keystroke (the apple key for example).
Does this work?

[spacefreak]

My mother got a 14" iBook for Xmas,and she just told me of a similar problem she is having.

She claims that her monitor goes out while she is actively using the computer. The coputer is still running - just the display is out. She ends up having to reboot the computer.

I am in the middle of researching this. So far, this thread is the closest I've found.

If anyone had ever come across a thread or two with similar problems to the one I am describing, feel free to let me know where you may have stumbled upon such a thread.

Thanks.

[spacefreak]

Originally posted by krrt:
My 512MB DIMM is third-party, but other than this one issue I have no reason to suspect it is at fault.

I just realized.. I put a 3rd-party 512 MB DIMM in my mom's iBook as well. Hmmmm.

[Detrius]

I have a customer's machine that is having this problem.

I duplicated the issue. I've pulled the third party RAM out, the Airport card, the keyboard, and even replaced the logic board and it still does this. The machine has the same problem if I boot it from an external FireWire drive with a known-good OS on it. Therefore, it's not a problem with a corrupt OS on the internal drive. The really freaky part is that I have sent this laptop to Apple twice. I sent it off the first time before replacing anything because I have too many machines waiting to spend two hours replacing an iBook logic board myself. They couldn't duplicate the problem. So, I replaced the logic board myself. At this point, I didn't want to get penalized for not having fixed it the first time, so I sent it to Apple again... they still claim they couldn't duplicate the problem.

Here's a concise description of the problem: The machine has booted into the OS and is running no applications. Close the lid. Most of the time, the machine goes to sleep. more often than one in ten, though, the sleep light never comes on. If you open the lid, the keycaps light still comes on, indicating the machine is still on. However, no amount of pushing keys wakes the machine up. It has crashed.

I guess at this point it's now my responsibility to figure out whether this is an OS bug or if there really is a culprit... anyone else ever figure it out--or get their machine fixed?

[markponcelet]

I've seen this problem before myself. It happened at least once on my old 300 mhz clamshell. However, it's extremely rare for me.

About the most likely culprit to me would be a bad RAM chip. Frankly, that's the only cause that I can think of that makes much sense. Maybe a bad hard drive, but there are other ways to diagnose those.

One thing I would try would be to listen. If the CD Rom makes some goofy noise (or none), then I'd start to wonder about some damaged device making some confusion for the logic board?

I know. I'm going pretty far out here, but this is a tough one.

Mark

[jaimzedup]

I've had this same problem and I just called Apple Support to get it resolved. This is what they told me to do:

shut down
press ctrl+shift+option+power button at once (nothing should happen)
wait 30 seconds
power on
(you should get an alert about resetting your clock)

Like I said, I just called them and we tested waking it up and it worked fine, but we'll see how it behaves as the week continues.