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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > Yawn...My iMac won't go to sleep!?

Yawn...My iMac won't go to sleep!?
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Keda
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Aug 9, 2006, 05:36 PM
 
Last week, my iMac stopped going to sleep by itself. How can I begin to trouble shoot this? I have watched the Activity Monitor, but I don't notice anything that jumps out at me.

Here are some recent occurrences that may serve as clues:

1) Bad 10.4.7 instal...had to reinstall the OS
2) iCal has been sluggish. When I make a new event, I get The Ball
3) I recently DL'd a bunch of new widgets...these are now turned off thru Widget Manager in Dashboard
4) I recently ran my monthly Onyx and repairs Permissions


My iMac's specs:
2 GHZ iMac CD, 2GB RAM, 256MB X1600


That's all I can think of. I really don't even know where to start w/this one.

Any ideas?

TIA
     
Keda  (op)
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Aug 9, 2006, 09:49 PM
 
The iMac did something new this evening. I manually put it to sleep, and that went normally. However, when I went back a few hours later the iMac was awake.

Are there any logs that I can look at to get a clue about this? There must be a process running that is keeping the machine awake. Does OSX record this type of info? Is there any way to track this? If it is keeping my iMac awake, then it must be using resources when Im working on the machine.
     
Cadaver
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Aug 10, 2006, 01:27 PM
 
Any external devices? What kind of keyboard and mouse are attached?
My wife's iMac had the same issue, which I believe is related to her Logitech wireless mouse. Once I took it off the system, the machine would stay asleep.
     
Kristoff
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Aug 10, 2006, 04:12 PM
 
So stupid.....we have an old iMac G4 that does the same ****. All we have is a Belkin hub, HP Printer, and iSub plugged in and the piece of **** wont sleep.

So freaking annoying.
signatures are a waste of bandwidth
especially ones with political tripe in them.
     
Keda  (op)
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Aug 10, 2006, 04:22 PM
 
Nothing external, except a USB dongle that has been on since well before trouble began. Im using an Apple BT keyboard and wired Mighty Mouse.

-edit-
just for fun, I yanked the dongle...let's see what happens.
     
neilw
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Aug 11, 2006, 11:37 AM
 
My G5 iMac has a similar problem, in that immediately after putting it to sleep, it will wake up immediately. That happens sometimes, not always. I haven't been able to nail down the culprit; it's possible it's my Logitech wireless mouse, but I dunno.

One way that I've been able to get it to stay asleep is to require password on wake from sleep. Then, when it wakes itself up, it will go to the password screen, which will then re-sleep if no input is received for 10 seconds or so. Eventually, it will put itself to sleep and stay asleep. Not really a solution, but has helped for me.

It really is annoying when I try to make it sleep and it keeps waking up, and there's no kind of system analyzer to understand why it's waking up. Would be great if someone could come up with a tool for this....
     
Keda  (op)
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Aug 13, 2006, 07:53 PM
 
I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth, but....The iMac is better, I'm not sure why, and that makes me uneasy.

So, I ran Onyx again on Friday. After the usual restart, the sleep issue still was occurring. The next morning, I quit every app that I could think of, set my sleep time to 1 minute, and proceeded to start each app/widget 1 or 2 at a time. When all apps were quite, the iMac went to as expected. Once or twice, as I relaunched apps, I thought I found the culprit, but was unable to repeat the no-sleep problem.

Now I have all my usual apps running and the iMac seems to be going to sleep as expected. So why feel uneasy? Because I have NO idea what caused this. I was out of town last night, but will be keeping a close eye on the system as the week goes on.
     
bsaxton
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Aug 21, 2006, 06:11 PM
 
Any luck finding the cause? My iMac is doing the same thing and I can't figure it out. I'll tackle widget here in a second.
     
Keda  (op)
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Aug 21, 2006, 06:47 PM
 
Sorry, no definitive explanation.

Try quitting everything and running Onyx. THe iMac has been sleeping recently. ?????
     
Naaaaak
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Aug 21, 2006, 07:13 PM
 
I have a logitech mouse that thinks it senses movement at seemingly random points. It will be fine all day then at night I'll wakeup and notice it moved slightly downwards when it turns the screen back on.

Also possible you have an app like VLC open which will prevent system sleep (I think).
To be determined later.
     
bsaxton
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Aug 22, 2006, 02:29 AM
 
I just tried the SMU clear thing. I then left every cable unplugged and let the computer boot up to the login screen. The computer (set to sleep in one minute) never went to sleep - although the screen did dim at about 30s and went off at 1 minute (but it was clearly still (awake). So... The computer has slept within the last month - but I can't pinpoint exactly when this started. I've been trying to pull off any software with system hooks or daemens that I may have installed, but I'm not having any luck. I guess I'll just start killing admin processes in Process Viewer until I get somewhere. If anyone else has ideas, please let me know!
     
Ω
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Aug 22, 2006, 03:02 AM
 
When I have issues with a non sleeping mac I just start killing processes in the terminal until I figure out which one is the culprit.

I tend to have issues with .mac syncing which stops my Ti from sleeping
"angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress"
     
Keda  (op)
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Aug 22, 2006, 06:35 AM
 
What I don't understand about this is that my iMac would have this problem after reboots. Shouldn't this have cleared/killed any run away processes? I wish I knew. Because the cause is unknown, I have an uneasy feeling that the problem could pop up again.
     
bsaxton
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Aug 22, 2006, 10:54 PM
 
Yeah, I'm still stumped. I started killing processes, but some processes are pretty critical, right? I could end up crashing my box? I wonder if the last Apple update did something to sleep control for iMacs?
     
Jelloburn
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Aug 25, 2006, 04:55 PM
 
I think it has to do with the latest updates. I ran into the same problem a few days ago. The best advice I could get on the Apple Support Forums was to reinstall OS X. I reinstalled but kept my old settings and applications. The computer slept fine after the re-install.

The next day I redownloaded all the updates since 10.4.4 (including Java, Quicktime, Frontrow, and some others I think) and now my machine won't sleep again. It must be something in 10.4.7.

Anyone else have these results?
     
Jelloburn
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Aug 25, 2006, 06:00 PM
 
Well, I think I found the answer to my problem at least. Mine wasn't so much a driver issue as it was an issue with the built in Bluetooth. I went into the Bluetooth setting in System Preferences and simply turned off the bluetooth receiver. I let my iMac sit for a minute and it went to sleep just fine. I'm not using any Bluetooth products, so I don't know what the deal is.
     
bsaxton
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Aug 25, 2006, 06:01 PM
 
I DON'T HAVE BLUETOOTH!!! This is driving me crazy because I have done everything I can think of...
     
icibaqu
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Aug 29, 2006, 10:41 AM
 
i recently noticed i was having this problem too. at this point it merits more investigation, but it is really odd. i wonder what a reinstall and then redownload to 10.4.6. will do to the problem...and is 10.4.8. anywhere on the horizon? i'm guessing a couple months especially if Leopard is "next spring"
     
   
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