MacBook waking from sleep for no reason

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Ugh! I have a 2.4 Penryn black MacBook. It's been waking up on it's own, overheating and shutting down since I installed 10.5.7. This happened when I first got it, and I took it to Apple. At that time, seems the RAM wasn't seated properly. It hasn't been a problem again until now. Yesterday, it did it twice. The RAM seems to be seated properly. Is there a firmware update or something I'm missing?

Eidorian · May 28, 2009

Waking from sleep while the lid is down with no external input devices?

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Eidorian said:
Waking from sleep while the lid is down with no external input devices?

Lid down, no externals plugged in and bluetooth off.

Eidorian · May 28, 2009

Welcome to my world. Does the display turn on at all when it wakes up? I haven't been able to track down a cause for why it just wants to wake up.

It has ruined my uptime quite a few times already.

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Eidorian said:
Welcome to my world. Does the display turn on at all when it wakes up? I haven't been able to track down a cause for why it just wants to wake up.

It has ruined my uptime quite a few times already.

No- the screen doesn't turn on that I've noticed. I woke up in the middle of the night last night to hear it's fans going like crazy and it's sleep light on solid. I had to open the lid and do a hard shutdown (screen did not come on). That was the second time it did it yesterday. This has not happened since I first bought it over a year ago. I'm thinking 10.5.7 has something to do with it.

Eidorian · May 28, 2009

leekohler said:
No- the screen doesn't turn on that I've noticed. I woke up in the middle of the night last night to hear it's fans going like crazy and it's sleep light on solid. I had to open the lid and do a hard shutdown (screen did not come on). That was the second time it did it yesterday. This has not happened since I first bought it over a year ago. I'm thinking 10.5.7 has something to do with it.

It does seem that it happens more often under 10.5.7 for me as well on my Late 2007 model.

I don't really have any advice though.

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Apparently no one else does either. I wonder if more people are having this problem.

Guy Incognito · May 28, 2009

I think it's probably a hardware problem, not a software problem. The same thing happened to me with my Rev. A blackbook. Apple replaced the bluetooth module and sleep switch first. When that didn't fix the problem, they replaced the logic board.

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Guy Incognito said:
I think it's probably a hardware problem, not a software problem. The same thing happened to me with my Rev. A blackbook. Apple replaced the bluetooth module and sleep switch first. When that didn't fix the problem, they replaced the logic board.

I don't know. It seems to only be happening now after the 10.5.7 update. And I have bluetooth off all the time.

Eidorian · May 28, 2009

I have my Bluetooth off as well and no devices attached via the USB ports. It'll still wake up when closed and force you to hard reboot.

zephead · May 28, 2009

I've occasionally been having this problem too, although it's been with 10.5.6. Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning and open the lid, just to find that it's already running. The fans were running low, even though the computer seemed to be kinda hot, and the screen stayed blank no matter what I pushed. The Caps and Num Locks wouldn't even turn on/off. So I'd just have to hard restart it and everything went back to normal.

I went in the Console to see what the wake reason was, and it said "Wake Reason: USB7 USB4". I don't know how USB could wake the computer even if I had nothing plugged in but the power adapter.

Eidorian · May 28, 2009

Yeah I found my machine abnormally warm as well when opening it up. The fan was just humming along on low and I wouldn't get anything in the logs besides the mention of "you turned the computer on at this time".

Great help system.log!

Wicker · May 28, 2009

The same thing happened to me recently and I also attribute it to 10.5.7 (as it hadn't happened before). I started a thread on it (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/701671/) but nobody seemed to have any suggestions... I'd really like to know what's going on! It hasn't been a big problem for me (only that once) but I'd like to be able to trust my MacBook to sleep and wake up!

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Seems there are more people having this problem. I wonder if it's even more widespread?

Guy Incognito · May 28, 2009

zephead said:
I went in the Console to see what the wake reason was, and it said "Wake Reason: USB7 USB4". I don't know how USB could wake the computer even if I had nothing plugged in but the power adapter.

This is the same sort of problem I had. I believe that the bluetooth module and sleep switch are both connected to the logic board via an internal USB controller. The problem likely has to do with a hardware fault in one or more of these components.

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Guy Incognito said:
This is the same sort of problem I had. I believe that the bluetooth module and sleep switch are both connected to the logic board via an internal USB controller. The problem likely has to do with a hardware fault in one or more of these components.

But why is it suddenly happening to most of us who updated to 10.5.7?

Guy Incognito · May 28, 2009

leekohler said:
But why is it suddenly happening to most of us who updated to 10.5.7?

It may well be coincidence. I had the problem with 10.5.6 (maybe 10.5.5 too), and so do other contributors to this thread. Or you may be experiencing a different problem with the same symptoms. At any rate, I can attest that the intermittent wake from sleep/bluetooth connectivity problem accompanied by the USB error in the logs was confirmed by Apple as a hardware problem, and was (finally) fixed when the logic board was replaced.

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Guy Incognito said:
It may well be coincidence. I had the problem with 10.5.6 (maybe 10.5.5 too), and so do other contributors to this thread. Or you may be experiencing a different problem with the same symptoms. At any rate, I can attest that the intermittent wake from sleep/bluetooth connectivity problem accompanied by the USB error in the logs was confirmed by Apple as a hardware problem, and was (finally) fixed when the logic board was replaced.

Hmm...I'll have to check mine when it does it next time.

EDIT- went through the log and only found this: Wake reason= EHC1 EHC2 UHC4. There is no other wake info for yesterday.

Eidorian · May 28, 2009

I've had it happen before under earlier versions of 10.5. It just happens more often under 10.5.7.

I don't get anything written to the logs though and my machine is the Late 2007 (Merom) White Macbook.

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Eidorian said:
I've had it happen before under earlier versions of 10.5. It just happens more often under 10.5.7.

I don't get anything written to the logs though and my machine is the Late 2007 (Merom) White Macbook.

Now that's weird. I had it happen when I first bought mine. Then for the longest time nothing. Now after 10.5.7, it's happening a lot. I have nothing in my log about it either, at least not the USB issue that was mentioned before.

Guy Incognito · May 28, 2009

leekohler said:
Now that's weird. I had it happen when I first bought mine. Then for the longest time nothing. Now after 10.5.7, it's happening a lot. I have nothing in my log about it either, at least not the USB issue that was mentioned before.

My problem was intermittent as well. After Apple replaced the sleep switch and bluetooth module, the problem went away for about six weeks. Then it came back. The fact that you're not seeing the USB error in the logs suggests that we may be talking about different problems with similar symptoms, though.

leekohler · May 28, 2009

Guy Incognito said:
My problem was intermittent as well. After Apple replaced the sleep switch and bluetooth module, the problem went away for about six weeks. Then it came back. The fact that you're not seeing the USB error in the logs suggests that we may be talking about different problems with similar symptoms, though.

Yeah- that error is not in the log at all. And I haven't had this happen for over a year.

yellow · May 29, 2009

Try removing /var/vm/sleepimage

A new one will be created when you put the Mac to sleep again.
That worked for me (so far).

Eidorian · May 29, 2009

yellow said:
Try removing /var/vm/sleepimage

A new one will be created when you put the Mac to sleep again.
That worked for me (so far).

I feel like I'm being overly paranoid.

Code:

-rw------T   1 root  wheel  4294967296 May 29 16:03 sleepimage

yellow · May 29, 2009

You are... new one gets created automatically when you sleep again. You don't hurt anything by deleting the file.

MacBook waking from sleep for no reason

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