Help with PB Comas

[Nejja Halcyon]

Hi,

I have a 17" 1.33 ghz 1gb ram PB running 10.3.5. Anyways, my mac seems to keep going into comas. That means that when I wake the computer up, the hard drive spins up, everything starts going, except the screen!. I can't sleep it again. The only option is to restart the computer. Now this happens every couple days, sometimes sooner, sometimes longer. This has happend on other versions of panther as well. It also happens on my mom's machine, which is a twin of mine (except in RAM). I regularly repair permissions, use MacJanitor, and the rest. This is more a nuciance than a huge problem. However, it is a problem nonetheless.

Does anyone know what is wrong?

Nejja Halcyon

 

[mikeyredk]

do you have sidetrack installed? if you do uninstall it

 

[stoid]

I have been experiencing the same problem on my 15 inch PowerBook from September 2003. I have yet to find a fix for this problem, but I'm not going to go through the hassle of shipping it into Apple for repairs. I don't have SideTrack installed, nor have I ever. The only correlation I see is that if I have a few unsaved documents open, it tends to go comatose more. Of course, it could just be that I only really remember the times when I lose work.

 

[Nejja Halcyon]

Sorry, what's Sidetrack?

Nejja Halcyon

 

[mikeyredk]

sidetrack

 

[Nejja Halcyon]

Well, I sure don't have it.

Anyone have a solution?

Nejja Halcyon

 

[mikeyredk]

powerbooks still under warranty bring it to a store near you.

 

[logicat2001]

Hey, I've got the same thing going on...
I'm bookmarking this thread. If I learn of anything, I'll make sure to add to this thread. Anyone else who has the same symptoms, please reply with more details as you learn them.

Thanks,
Logicat

 

[ephramz]

I sometimes have this same problem on a Firewire Powerbook (Pismo). Recently I can recover if I close the lid, and wait for the pulsing power light to tell me it has gone back to sleep. Then when I open it again, it seems to come back from sleep OK. Have you ever tried that? You said you can't make it sleep again, but did you trying by just closing the list.

 

[firewizard]

i have a 15 PB 1ghz and this problem happens to me when i start to open the lid and then i lose grip and the lid shuts again and then i open it again and everything wakes up except screen. once i started opening up the scrren on the first try ive never had a problem
maybe that might help you guys out

 

[Nejja Halcyon]

No, I sucessfully open the screen. It still goes into a coma. I can't close and re-open the screen, it still doesn't work.

Any suggestions?

Nejja Halcyon

 

[logicat2001]

I'm with Nejja. Once I wake from sleep to a blank screen I can no longer put the laptop back to sleep. I hear the fan (not full speed but active) and can't put back to sleep by holding the power button. The only thing I can do is either shut down by continuing to hold the power button for several seconds, or restart via CTRL-COMMAND-POWER.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

[Nejja Halcyon]

Exactly what happens to me. The only real way I can tell that it actually turned off is the fan goes off. I didn't know about the restart keys, do they have to be held down?

Nejja Halycyon

 

[Logik]

i have the same problem as well. doesn't happen very often but it does happen. sometimes it'll fix itself by closing and reopening the lid.. sometimes it works when i hit Fn+apple key+F2

it's a 15" pb 1.33ghz (latest model)

 

[stoid]

It just happened to me again. Of note, my external HDs plugged into the FW400 port spun up like normal, but my USB mouse remained off. I'm wondering if this is a glitch in the 'closed operation with external monitor' feature? That would also explain why no iBook users report this problem, only PBook users. Do iBooks support closed lid operation, and do any iBook users experience this problem?

 

[comictimes]

do you have sidetrack installed? if you do uninstall it

Sorry, this is off topic for this thread, but what problems does sidetrack cause? Because I have it, and have never had these problems, but now I'm worried...

 

[Nejja Halcyon]

Well, it happened to me again. Does anyone out there in the mac community have a fix to it, or does everyone just keep having comas?

Nejja Halycon

 

[Logik]

i'm bumping this back up.. i called applecare and since i don't have the extended 3 year thing they wouldn't talk to me. talk about a load of rubbish. very disappointed with apple and certainly tells me they don't want to help people who have spent $2100 in apple products.. being a switcher i'm high disappointed because all pc manufacturers will at least try to help you the best they can.. so much for apple's support being better

in the mean time i'm going to turn off my "prompt password for relogin after screensaver" option or whatever it's called and see if that helps.. i've also reported a bug for os x

 

[Logik]

I seem to have found a way to make mine reproduce my version of the problems completely and nearly flawlessly. I can't guarantee this will do it on yours but I've had no one else try this yet so I'm hoping you guys can give your input as to whether YOUR system does act the same as mine.

Powerbook Revision C 15" 1.33ghz 768mb ram (1 256mb and 1 512mb that i added). Please note that the problem was happening for me BEFORE I added the ram.

System Preferences
Security Pane
Set "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screensaver"
Set "Log out after '5' minutes of inactivity"

Desktop & Screen Saver Pane
Set "Start screen saver" to less than 5 minutes OR
Use Hot Corners and use the hot corner

To make it work for me, those settings need to be set. Next, wait either for the screen saver to start or use the hot corner to start it. After 5 minutes the machine will start to log off automatically (it counts down from 120 seconds) and as long as you have the password screen (or screensaver up) from the screen saver portion to relogin mine shows only the mouse cursor plus my background and a "shadow" effect at the top of the screen where the menu bar used to be. The mouse does move, but nothing you do fixes the problem. Once I shut the lid of the pb it will not goto sleep, and after waiting for about 10 seconds I can open the lid and then it proceeds to either goto sleep then or remain on. If it goes to sleep it does not fix things when you wake it up.

My guess based on this is that Auto-Logoff feature is what causes the problem for me. Once that is turned off, the problem does not happen.

I then ran Verify and Repair permissions and the problem seems to be fixed... though I'm going to give it some more time to be sure. If you guys could try this out and reply with your results both before and after running repair permissions that might help us solve the problem.

 

[stoid]

I've found that if I unplug everything from my laptop before sleeping it, that it wakes up ok. Of course, since the problem has been happening sporadically, I have no proof that unplugging everything actually fixes the problem, just that since I started unplugging stuff, I haven' thad the issue, yet.

 

[goodknight411]

I have the same problem. I called Apple about it and the guy feed me a line about how it's just a freak thing, nothing to worry about, and make sure to plug the power cord into the wall before you plug into the PB. Mmmhmm... sure yeah ok. Doesn't make a difference. It still happens every couple of weeks.

Oh yeah, it started the day i took mine out of the box. Apple didn't offer to fix it or anything and i have Applecare.