[prutz11]

I am using 10.3.4 on my Powebook G4 500mhz. When waking from sleep my screen sometimes remains black (completely off) and I cannot put the machine back to sleep. The only think I can do is force the computer off by holding the power button. Reseting the PRAM had no effect.

Anyone else ever have this problem?

[chris v]

I've had this happen a couple of times, and a tap on the fn + display brightness (F2) key has woken the monitor up when it happened. Mine's an AI book, so I'm not sure if the keyboard layout's the same with the combo function/special keys on a TI book.

CV

[prutz11]

Originally posted by chris v:
I've had this happen a couple of times, and a tap on the fn + display brightness (F2) key has woken the monitor up when it happened. Mine's an AI book, so I'm not sure if the keyboard layout's the same with the combo function/special keys on a TI book.

CV

Thanks for the suggestion... I forgot to mention that the keyboard seems to be dead when it happens too. I am starting to get worried of impending hardware failure

[chabig]

I've had that just a few times. I force the power off and reboot just like you.

chris

[msuper69]

This happens when the battery is too low. Plugging in the AC power does the trick (iin this case anyway).

[Kristoff]

happens to my pismo periodically.
I just close the lid, and it takes like 20 seconds to go back to sleep, then I open it and all is well.

[ginoledesma]

This happens to my iBook G4, too, although what I do to wake it up is to put it back to sleep again (close the lid, wait for the sleed LED to come on) then wake it up.

[angelmb]

Originally posted by Kristoff:
happens to my pismo periodically.
I just close the lid, and it takes like 20 seconds to go back to sleep, then I open it and all is well.

Ditto, my previous Pismo 500 had that behaviour a couple of times.

[St.John]

Originally posted by msuper69:
This happens when the battery is too low. Plugging in the AC power does the trick (iin this case anyway).

I don't think battery level affects it; it's happened to me ( Rev. B 12", 10.3.4 ) with pretty much full charge; I think it can happen ANY time you're running off battery and it goes into sleep mode.

[prutz11]

Originally posted by Kristoff:
happens to my pismo periodically.
I just close the lid, and it takes like 20 seconds to go back to sleep, then I open it and all is well.

The computer won't go back to sleep either... I'd swear it was dead but I can hear that the HD is running.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far

[Diggory Laycock]

I've had this happen to me quite a lot recently.

Even when fully charged.

1GHz PowerBook 17"

[Kristoff]

Originally posted by prutz11:
The computer won't go back to sleep either... I'd swear it was dead but I can hear that the HD is running.

Thanks for all the suggestions so far

Close the lid and wait...like 5 minutes if you have to...to see if the LED starts blinking again. I'd be surprised if it didn't eventually fall back asleep.

[richardb]

Hey, I've owned three Powerbook G4 - a 667 Mhz, 1 ghz, and finally a 1.2 Ghz. They've all suffered from this problem and when it happens a forced restart is the only way out. I think most ibook or powerbook owners experience this from time to time. My friend even heard it from a fellow passenger on the London underground! This certainly is a long standing problem and if the bug wasn't so elusive we would probably have seen some sort of class action.

Anyway, my bet is that it got something to do with the graphic card.

[geekwagon]

I've had this happen a few times on every powerbook I have ever owned (I only go back as afar as 867 TiBook though.)

I find it seems to be more likely to happen if the Powerbook has gotten jarred around more than usual. I can go for months without it happening, and then when I travel and it is bouncing around in my backpack it will do it twice in once week.

Sometimes I can get it to go back to sleep and it will wake up the second time, sometimes it won't. Weird problem.

[Amorya]

Happened to me today. The keyboard had power, since the caps lock light came on when I pressed the key. (Alas, while this is a good test if the system is frozen on Windows, it doesn't work for that on the Mac). I didn't try brightness, but I did try closing the laptop and it did _not_ go to sleep.

This was on AC power.


Amorya

[prutz11]

Originally posted by Amorya:
Happened to me today. The keyboard had power, since the caps lock light came on when I pressed the key. (Alas, while this is a good test if the system is frozen on Windows, it doesn't work for that on the Mac). I didn't try brightness, but I did try closing the laptop and it did _not_ go to sleep.

This was on AC power.


Amorya

Very interesting. I never had this problem before a few weeks ago. Wish I knew what was going on... but at least I am not crazy.

[dostler]

I have had the same problem on my 12" and 15" aluminum powerbooks. Nothing so far seems to help it. It happens to me at least 2 or 3 times a week. Is Apple aware of this problem?

[Brass]

Originally posted by Kristoff:
happens to my pismo periodically.
I just close the lid, and it takes like 20 seconds to go back to sleep, then I open it and all is well.

Ditto for me. The power button does not help in putting it to sleep in this case, but closing the lid does force sleep (after some time), and waking it again (by opening the lid) usually works okay next time.

[prutz11]

Originally posted by Brass:
Ditto for me. The power button does not help in putting it to sleep in this case, but closing the lid does force sleep (after some time), and waking it again (by opening the lid) usually works okay next time.

Yep doesn't work for me... left my computer closed for like 10 minutes last time it happened. Annoying problem.

[JKT]

Have you all tried resetting your PMU (power management unit)? Search Apple KB for the how to.

[prutz11]

Originally posted by JKT:
Have you all tried resetting your PMU (power management unit)? Search Apple KB for the how to.

Here's the link for everyone... I will try it now.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

[NeilCharter]

This happens to me quite often

Waiting for 10 mins didn't work for me.

Reseting the PMU or PRAM didn't help either.

Sometimes hitting the screen brightness key works, though not recently. I'll try it with the fn key.

Sounds like its just something that happens with PBs when they are put to sleep sometimes.

Shame cos otherwise my PB 17 inch is faultless.

[Terri]

This has never happened to me with my 17" but it does happen often to my friend's Titanium. I've been thinking of doing an archive and install to see if it fixes this problem.

[ginoledesma]

When this happens to me, I do the following:

1. Check if the system is indeed "awake" (just no display) by pressing the CAPS lock key and the NUM lock keys. If they light up, then at least the hardware is functioning.

2. Adjust display brightness to "force it" to display (doesn't usually work)

3. Adjust volume control to verify if the system is indeed responding. (usually works, still no display)

4. Press power button, then 'S' (for sleep). (doesn't usually work)

5. Close lid, wait for sleep (usually 5-30 seconds). usually works.

6. If it doesn't work, restart.

[prutz11]

Originally posted by prutz11:
Here's the link for everyone... I will try it now.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449

It's been a few days since my last dead screen... resetting the PMU may have helped me... I will post back here if it happens again.

Thanks for the help everybody! good luck!

[dr. zoidberg]

i´ll try resetting the PMU as well ... i´ve had this issue on every powerbook i had so far: pismo 400, tibook 867, alubook 1.3gig ... yeah, it´s really a shame that this still happens. btw: the last time it happened and i had to do a force shutdown, it took down my bluetooth, which didn´t recover for a couple of days no matter what i did. funnily, it seem to be back to life now ... really weird.

[cpac]

I've had this problem pop up from time to time on my TiBook 500 - and I've found either that I can (1) do the power button thing (if I'm in a hurry to get back to work) or (2) shut the lid and wait, (as was said, several minutes - sometimes like 25 even) for it to fall back to sleep.

As for cause, I've noticed 2 things that seem to be associated with it in some way: 1 - plugging the powerbook in, when the last time it was awake it was on battery, and 2- typing on the keyboard (to enter the password, e.g.) too quickly after waking the powerbook.

I've managed to avoid these problems almost entirely by being patient (waiting an extra 3 seconds) upon waking from sleep for the password dialog box to appear before I begin typing the password.

[[APi]TheMan]

It used to happen on my Pismo 400 (upgraded to a 900mhz Powerlogix G3) and I used to just hard restart it with command-shift-power. If I recall correctly, I had this problem with just waking from a sleeping screen, as I never shut the lid of my powerbook, I merely just have the display turn off after some minutes of inavtivity. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why I never tried resetting the PMU.

I have a 15" 1.25 ghz AlBook now, though.

[Mojo-ike]

this is a problem for desktop machines as well. it is an old issue that has been around since a few builds before 10.3 went final. the apple forums used to be filled with people complaining about their sleep issues (iMacs, eMacs, PowerMacs, PowerBooks, iBooks, etc). the typical situation seems to be the first sleep and wake (after a reboot or power on) is fine, but the second sleep and wake your machine hangs (or disappears to never-never-land). no amount of resetting the PMU or deleting files or creating new accounts or swapping memory or fiddling with the energy saver has fixed the problem for the majority of the posts i have read. so i, personally, have given up on sleep and 10.3. it is a real big shame, as it used to work so well in 10.2.

in other words: this is not a powerbook only issue.

[prutz11]

Originally posted by prutz11:
It's been a few days since my last dead screen... resetting the PMU may have helped me... I will post back here if it happens again.

Thanks for the help everybody! good luck!

Spoke to soon. Dead screen'd today. What an annoying problem.