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Javahead · May 13, 2003, 12:08 PM

I've been running a eMac for nearly a year now without any problems. However, I've had multiple lockups over the past week or so that required a power reset.

After leaving the eMac running for a while (like overnight or while I'm at work) I return to find that the screen is black (off) but the computer is not asleep (the fan, HD, and optical mouse are still powered.) It does not respond to any keyboard input. Once it's in this state, my current solution is to power off and restart.

The only recent system changes I can think of are the installation of 10.2.6 and iTunes 3.

Has anyone else experienced this? How can I locate the cause of the problem?

Toyin · May 13, 2003, 12:16 PM

That's happened to me a few times with my desktop (DP 500). All I do is put the machine to sleep with the power button (on the monitor or tower) and then hit the keyboard for it to wake up properly. I rarely have to do a hard restart.

pat++ · May 13, 2003, 03:44 PM

Try to see in /Library/Logs if you have a Panic.log or something...

Javahead · May 15, 2003, 11:21 AM

thanks for the hints.

I took a look at my panic.log, but all the entries in it were pretty old and were related to Safari.

next time it happens, I'll try touching the power button to see if I can put it into sleep mode w/o actually shutting it down completely.

Javahead · May 16, 2003, 09:26 AM

well, it happened again this morning. I tried to put it to sleep by briefly pressing the power button, but nothing happened. I had to power cycle the eMac to get it back up again.

Rainy Day · May 17, 2003, 10:32 PM

After leaving the eMac running for a while (like overnight or while I'm at work) I return to find that the screen is black (off) but the computer is not asleep (the fan, HD, and optical mouse are still powered.) It does not respond to any keyboard input. Once it's in this state, my current solution is to power off and restart.

Welcome to the club!

This is an intermittent sleep problem. The symptoms are exactly as you describe. In your case, it's hanging upon entry into sleep mode. It generally doesn't happen every time your Mac goes into sleep mode; for many, it's like one in every twenty times, but YMMV.

Other people have a similar problem coming out of sleep. I used to have a problem coming out of sleep in MacOS X 10.0 - 10.1, but with 10.2 it shifted to going into sleep mode. I had a similar problem in MacOS 9, but solved that by always bringing the Finder to the front before invoking sleep. That trick didn't seem to work for 10.0.

I noticed that a program called SleepLock seemed to exacerbate the problem, so i stopped using it and things improved considerably.

You might want to take a peek at this thread, cast your vote, and add your system type to the discussion. Maybe we can get this thing figured out and find a solution to this problem!

Oh, and make sure you have a copy of DiskWarrior handy because, sooner or later, this is going to do nasty things to your HD, and DiskWarrior will save your rear end.

Axo1ot1 · May 18, 2003, 12:04 AM

I've been seeing this too. I think it's a bug from 10.2.5

I'm on an MDD dual 1 GHz

Big Mac · May 18, 2003, 04:34 AM

This intermittent bug definitely isn't a rarity, nor is it isolated to any particular version of OS X. I've seen it happen most often to Quicksilvers - they simply fail to wake from sleep sometimes. (I seem to recall, also, that eMacs and Quicksilvers share motherboard similarities.) Those who are bitten should be bugging Apple, since that's the only way to affect change.

Simon X · May 18, 2003, 08:18 AM

Phew, thank heavens it's not just my Mac.

I've seen it a few times and it scared the crap out of me the first time it happened.

TiBook 1GHz SD
10.2.4 and .6 (happened with these OS versions)

hudson1 · May 18, 2003, 08:21 AM

I've found that the only time my eMac gets truly stuck going into sleep is when, I think, someonw has just used a game. In my case it would be a family member using one of the Harry Potter games.

However, I've had numerous *temporary* hangs going into sleep where the monitor goes blank and the eMac becomes totally unresponsive. These always seem to right themselves if the machine is just left alone for awhile. Have those who are experiencing this problem tried that or have you immediately bailed with a hard reset/restart?

Rainy Day · May 18, 2003, 01:21 PM

This intermittent bug definitely isn't a rarity, nor is it isolated to any particular version of OS X... Those who are bitten should be bugging Apple, since that's the only way to effect change.

Absolutely agree!

I've found that the only time my eMac gets truly stuck going into sleep is when, I think, someone has just used a game.

Don't forget that your Mac may try to go into sleep mode via the Energy Saver after a certain amount of inactivity.

I've had numerous *temporary* hangs going into sleep where the monitor goes blank and the eMac becomes totally unresponsive. These always seem to right themselves if the machine is just left alone for awhile. Have those who are experiencing this problem tried that or have you immediately bailed with a hard reset/restart?

Each machine model seems to have a different footprint for how the problem manifests itself. Some users are not so lucky, and hours and hours of waiting makes no difference, while for some, it pays off (although usually inside 10 minutes... that is if it's going to come back at all).

I've had a little bit of both. Sometimes when i put my machine to sleep, it'll appear to hang, as the power LED doesn't do it's blinking routine right away, but inside of about two minutes, it'll start blinking (and i know its okay then). But i can usually tell when it's going to be okay, and when it's not (something about the sound it makes, i think). The other night, before going to bed it appeared to be hanging. I decided to give it a few minutes, went to brush my teeth, but then forgot about it. In the morning, it was still dark as could be and all locked up.