Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

mintcake · Oct 5, 2007, 09:24 PM

Just recently - the last couple of weeks - my MBP has begun to be temperamental on waking from sleep. Specifically, sometimes the screen stays dead (the rest of the system appears to wake as per usual). A hard reboot is needed to get it back. This doesn't happen all the time, just some of the time, and it happens whether it's plugged in or operating on battery. I'm wondering if it's related to the recent firmware update but I think it had already happened a couple of times already before then. I've tried the basics - repaired permissions, reset SMC - but it's still doing it. Anyone know what gives?

MickeyZ · Oct 6, 2007, 07:39 PM

I had a similar problem. In my case it turned out to be the NDAS drive, or NDAS Utility causing this. I rarely use this drive, so normally I used to 'eject' it and unmount it in NDAS Utility application. Initially I didn't know what was causing the screen not to turn on after waking from sleep (I thought it was a screen saver I had installed), so I reinstalled the system and the problem disappeared. Then I started installing other applications I normally use and when I added NDAS drive with its Utility application and as before I unmounted the drive when not needed the 'black screen' problem came back. Of course it might be something completely different in your case. To rule out the hardware issue you could start your Mac from an external drive with clean system installed and if the problem doesn't occur then the cause could be something you installed recently.

chabig · Oct 6, 2007, 09:44 PM

I'm sorry MickeyZ, what's an "NDAS drive"?

mintcake · Oct 7, 2007, 09:25 AM

Ah, it could well be the NDAS utility! I've since ditched my NDAS drive (two corrupt and unreadable file systems within the space of three weeks does not instil confidence) but the utility is still on my system, even if it's not running.

Thanks, will try getting rid of it.

edit - Chabig, NDAS

chabig · Oct 7, 2007, 05:46 PM

Thanks for the NDAS info.

mintcake · Oct 9, 2007, 02:07 PM

NP.

For the record, uninstalling the NDAS utility did not solve the problem, in the end I did an archive and install.

chabig · Oct 9, 2007, 09:04 PM

Something I just read on another forum suggests that the problem may be due to having any Microsoft Office apps running when the machine goes to sleep. The suggestion was to quit all Office apps before sleeping. It's only been a day or so, but I haven't had the black screen since I began quitting all Office apps.

Chris