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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Odd MacBookPro Sleep issue

Odd MacBookPro Sleep issue
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PBFan
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Oct 17, 2006, 11:23 PM
 
I just got a 15" MacBookPro (2.16 GHz) and love it. No heat issues or fan problems so far. But I'm having an odd issue with sleep. I've read through the forum and I see other sleep issues, but nothing that exactly describes what I'm experiencing.

I'm used to putting my laptop to sleep by closing the lid. When I reopen it the next morning it goes through the process of checking for new email, etc. at that time. As a result, I close the lid while Mail is still open and Safari still active. What I'm noticing is that my machine does indeed go to sleep in the sense that the screen goes dark right away and the front light starts "breathing." But to my surprise, it is still active enough to get email while the lid is closed. When I open the lid, email is already sitting there.

I went to work today and when I got back not only was email already there but my laptop was warm. It had been on all day (plugged in, of course) although the lid was down and the screen was off.

The only extension I have installed other than the standard setup is Little Snitch. The only things I've done with Energy Saver was to say that when plugged in to never turn the computer to sleep. That's what I've already done, but usually closing the lid is supposed to override that setting. It always did with my old Powerbook G4 and it had the same Energy Saver setting.

I tried rebooting with Command-Option-P-R and no change. What has changed in this MacBookPro model such that just closing the lid doesn't put the system to sleep (only the screen)?
     
houltmac
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Oct 18, 2006, 01:44 AM
 
I have read a few reports about this, only on the MBP and only after the 10.4.8 update. Have you updated to that yet? It may be that something in the update stops the override from working...
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 18, 2006, 09:09 AM
 
Yes, I have updated to 10.4.8. It has all of the latest updates for all programs. It's basically a plain vanilla machine since I've only had it for a couple of days. I did port over the files from my old Powerbook, of course, but as I say the only extension I have installed is LittleSnitch. I tend to not run a lot of third-party software except as standalone utilities.

I have no problem making the system go to sleep when I say to do it explicitly. It has no problem going to sleep when enough time passes without being used (on battery). I have no other power issues that I'm aware of.

I have adjusted the Energy Savings setting back to default values for both adapter and battery. And right now I tell it to go to sleep before I close the lid, but I'd like to avoid this step. I just haven't figured out why closing the lid doesn't override my Energy Savings setting.
     
hemant
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Oct 18, 2006, 09:28 AM
 
Had the same problem, however a PMU reset fixed the issue.
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 18, 2006, 09:50 AM
 
OK, I will try the PMU reset tonight and see if that fixes it. There are a number of warning statments on the Apple doc page explaining how to do a PMU reset that I thought I would avoid doing it unless I had to. Does it reset stuff that I then have to fix?
     
hemant
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Oct 18, 2006, 11:21 AM
 
Nope, I dont think it alters the Energy saver or any other setting.
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 18, 2006, 11:28 AM
 
OK, thanks very much for chiming in. I'll try it tonight and post the results to this thread for future reference for others.
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 18, 2006, 07:54 PM
 
Yes, the PMU reset did the trick. I can now close the lid on my MBP and it properly goes to sleep. Many thanks for the responses.
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 18, 2006, 11:33 PM
 
OK, now I'm getting kernel panics and being forced to do hard resets. Happened twice now. I'm wondering if that PMU reset caused some problems. I did do it a second time after the first panic, and now it just happened again a few hours later.

By kernal panic, I mean the dark shading descending over the screen and the message saying to hold down the power button.
     
hemant
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Oct 20, 2006, 02:49 PM
 
Did the issue get resolved?
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 20, 2006, 03:02 PM
 
Still experimenting. The sleep issue continues to be fine now. As for the kernel panics, I removed all of my Login Items, shut down, starting back up and then spent all evening last night trying to stress the machine into doing it again. Nothing. I did lots of video conversions and playing, music, web surfing, for the entire evening and had no problems. Could it have been a software conflict? Not sure yet. If I continue to not have problems through the weekend, I'll chalk it up to a Login item conflict. If it returns, that wasn't the problem.

I have another stick of RAM (1 GB extra) to add to the machine. I've been holding off in the hopes of resolving this issue first because I know the first thing any Apple tech will tell me to do is "remove the third-party RAM." Right now I'm keeping this machine as vanilla as I can until I know what's going on.

I'll report back in a few days if the problem does not return, or sooner if it does.
     
Kevin Dunahee
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Oct 20, 2006, 06:44 PM
 
Same here, after the update, when I close the lid and open it up an hour later, somehow it has burned off 20-25% of its battery. It doesn't even use that much while I am using it regularly. I was wondering what the deal was until I saw this thread.
     
stravinsky1911
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Oct 21, 2006, 08:47 AM
 
Does anyone here use a usb microphone? My MBP has been choosy about when it wants to sleep, and the best I can recall is that I purchased a usb mic at about the time that this started...
timeline - SE/30, some crappy performa, original bondi iMac 233, TiBook500, macbook pro 2GHz
     
cold aspiration
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Oct 21, 2006, 03:08 PM
 
Same EXACT problem with the OP here. Sometimes (like this morning) i come to open up my mbp to find that it is all warm and it is already awake. happens I would say about 15% of the time, quite disconcerting. I am going to PMU reset but I don't know it that would really solve my problem because this doesn't happent to me all the time

Worth a shot though.

PS. is there any way to confirm that the PMU Reset actually DID occurr? In the past (holding down option,p,r, whatever) I was reasssured by the second chime of the startup sound. Now the new method is to turn it off and remove everything including the battery.. then hold down the power button for five seconds.. Any way to confirm ?
     
mintcake
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Oct 21, 2006, 05:52 PM
 
I zapped the com.apple.PowerManagement.plist and com.apple.systemuiserver.plist preferences and that seems to have fixed it, for now.
     
Ratspittle
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Oct 22, 2006, 04:15 AM
 
I have been having the same problem. I did a pmu reset and it worked....once. The first time I shut the lid, it worked, every time since then, back to the same thing...getting email while closed, battery usage, etc.
BTW after a PMU reset (in answer to your question) I heard a long beep at startup.
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cold aspiration
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Oct 22, 2006, 04:56 AM
 
Long beep?? As in the startup chime? Could you be more specific please? I didn't hear anything out of the norm.
     
clueo8
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Oct 23, 2006, 09:41 AM
 
I found this on an apple forum and saw it was quickly mentioned before. I did have this issue after 10.4.8 and I thought it was the update or my recent usage of a bluetooth modem.

I did this and it seems to work. I think there must have been some change to the format of the system preferences file for power management between 10.4.7 and 10.4.8. After an upgrade, you need to delete a couple of the power related preference files and reboot. OSX will automatically recreate the files (I suppose with default settings) and the problem with sleep failures goes away. The files to delete are:

-/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

-/Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist--(username is your name or System Administrators name).

-/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist

Not all these files may be present (I didn't have the AutoWake) and not all these files are regenerated when you reboot. The PowerManagement.plist file is regenerated when you make a change to the Energy Saver system preferences.
( Last edited by clueo8; Oct 23, 2006 at 09:42 AM. Reason: added hyperlink)
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 23, 2006, 10:59 AM
 
Thanks for the tips about the .plist files. I have found that my MBP sleeps normally most of the time, but the problem is not 100% gone.

As for my kernel panics, I took my machine back to the Apple store yesterday to have it checked out in detail. Spent an hour with the Genius Bar guy doing lots of tests. The hardware checks out fine. I asked about the possibility of it being the motherboard heatsink issue, but he reminded me that this is specific to the MacBook model, not the MBP. Bottom line: He thinks it is most like a case of my transferring my files from my PowerPC-based Powerbook to this Intel-based MBP. Not all of the software brought over is Universal. Some settings may be off. He suggested that I either A) create a new user with a totally plain vanilla environment and see if the KPs continue (if they don't, then it's a problem with my user environment); or B) Do an Archive & Install reinstallation of OS X in order to clear out any incompatibility issues with my transferred software.

Since this is a new machine and since I have good backups of all my files, I've decided to take option C that I invented:

1. Do a clean reinstall.
2. Copy over only my User documents, not my Library files.
3. On a case-by-case basis, look at the third-party apps I had, go to their web sites to see which of them are ready for the Intel world, and only download those apps again (instead of just copying it over from my old machine).

Since my physical memory checks out, I do tend to think the incompatibility issue is the likely cause of my problem -- and *NOT* related to the sleep issue in this thread. I wanted to clear that up for anyone reading this thread. I will deal with my KP problem seperately. For the sleep issue, I will try deleting those power management plist files if the Sleep problem reoccurs after I do my clean reinstall tonight.
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 25, 2006, 09:28 AM
 
OK, clean reinstall done two nights ago and so far all is well. I've carefully restored only my documents and movies and songs, and have begun to re-download 3rd-party applications, but only if they are Universal. This is probably a bit of overkill, but on the other hand it's kind of fun to get all new apps.

No sleep problems, no kernel panics, so far so good.
     
Ratspittle
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Oct 26, 2006, 03:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by cold aspiration View Post
Long beep?? As in the startup chime? Could you be more specific please? I didn't hear anything out of the norm.
Yes....a long computery sounding beep....not the start up chime
The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 26, 2006, 07:48 PM
 
Well, no dice. Tonight I had multiple kernel panics. *sigh*

I think I'm going to return this unit and get the C2D MBP instead in the hopes that any tweaks they have made in the meantime will fix the problem, whatever it is. For the record, I did a clean total reinstall and am running a very vanilla machine now. The only extra item in my System Preferences Other panel is the Flip4Mac WMV viewer. Which has been installed but never yet used.

No idea why this is happening, and yes I tried deleting the files listed above in this thread and it made no difference.
     
quattrokid73
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Oct 26, 2006, 08:03 PM
 
you can just return it?
     
mrchin
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Oct 26, 2006, 09:29 PM
 
Long solid beep is usually a firmware update chime. That's doing a reboot with power and apple on older models after firmware install shutsdown system for final update.
Dual 2.0 G5/2.5GB/ATI 9800 Pro | MacBook Pro 2.16 Gore Duo/2GB/ATI X1600
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 26, 2006, 10:38 PM
 
Yes, you can return any new Mac within a few days of purchase, no questions asked. If you can prove it's broken, you won't pay anything and get your refund. Otherwise there is a 10% restocking fee if the box has been opened.
     
PBFan  (op)
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Oct 30, 2006, 11:42 AM
 
OK, I returned it yesterday. For what it's worth, here is how the conversation went at the Apple Store when I brought my MBP back for refund:

Me: "Hi, I'd like to return this MBP as it's just having too many problems to be used. I've had the Genius Bar look at it and it's still not stable."

Employee: "What is the problem you're having?"

Me: "Kernel panics, random shutdowns. I think you can agree that a system that does this randomly is not one you can use for getting work done."

Employee: "And you say you've had the Genius Bar look at it?"

Me: "Yes."

Employee: "OK, let me get my supervisor."

Supervisor, after hearing the above, including a look of recognition at hearing "kernel panics": "OK, no problem, we'll take it back and give you a refund."

No restocking fee, a full refund. Keep in mind that I returned it in the original box with all parts in place and everything in perfect condition. And I returned in within the two-week period listed on the receipt saying I could return it (with a 10% restocking fee if the box was opened). I didn't have to ask about not paying the 10%. It was assumed on their part since I was having what seemed to be a known problem to them. I got my refund no further questions asked.

Now to get a newer MBP and assume that whatever the cause of these problems, they may have made engineering tweaks on the new models to fix the issue.
     
PBFan  (op)
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Nov 27, 2006, 04:13 PM
 
OK, to finish out this thread with a pleasant outcome, I bought a new C2D MBP on Friday. It's the 15" 2.33 model, so I gained over my previous MBP a faster chip and more hard disk space. It's a beauty of a machine. No screen issues (no bad pixels, no inconsistent lighting), no kernel panics, no sleep issues, much cooler case temperature, quieter fans, perfect.

I'm very pleased that Apple seems to have corrected some of the engineering issues they had with the original MBP models. All's well.
     
   
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