Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iMac keeps going to sleep while I am using it.

parrothead

parrothead

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 24, 2003
644
0
Edmonds, WA
Any advice?

My iMac keeps going to sleep right while I am using it. It is extremely annoying and hurting my productivity. It definitely happens more often when I am playing a game or have a lot of apps open. Also, when I am running Vista through bootcamp it will crash games to the desktop.

I assume that this could be a problem with my graphics card or RAM? I am trying to get some advice here before going to Apple since I work at home and I really can't afford lost productivity while they hang on to the computer for two weeks.

My iMac specs: 20" screen running 10.5.8 on the 2.4GHz intel core 2 duo. I have 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (factory installed). The graphics card is an ATI Radeon HD2600 256MB

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
Hellhammer said:
Repair permissions with Disk Utility
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, but while I am sure that this won't hurt, I am not sure it will solve the problem. Will it help the crashing problem with I am booted natively in Vista? I have not any crashing issues with it until recently, which was the same time I noticed the sleeping issues when booted in OSX.
 
parrothead said:
Thanks for the advice, but while I am sure that this won't hurt, I am not sure it will solve the problem. Will it help the crashing problem with I am booted natively in Vista? I have not any crashing issues with it until recently, which was the same time I noticed the sleeping issues when booted in OSX.
Click to expand...

There could be a permission that somehow forces your Mac to sleep. IMO it's just so easy to do it and it may fix it. If Vista is crashing too, verify the disk in Disk Utility too, might be a HD issue
 
I have run the permissions repair and the disk verify. If the problem persists then we can seek for another answer.
 
Well, I repaired permissions and verified the hard drive. Just now I had the computer go to sleep on me 4 times in about 30 seconds. Any other suggestions?
 
parrothead said:
So I tried both of these options and it didn't help. Any other ideas? Thanks for all the advice, BTW.
Click to expand...

Delete

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist
 
Tried that, didn't seem to make a difference. The last time I had the sleep syndrome my computer went to sleep 3 times in a row. Then when it slept a 4th time, I heard the HD spin down like normal, but the screen didn't go completely dark. It looked like I had just turned down the brightness to just barely the level where I could still see it. After that I could not wake the computer. I eventually had to hold the power button down until the computer did the forced shut down. Started up normally. Any other ideas?

BTW, thanks again for all the ideas so far.


Hellhammer said:
Delete

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist
Click to expand...
 
parrothead said:
Tried that, didn't seem to make a difference. The last time I had the sleep syndrome my computer went to sleep 3 times in a row. Then when it slept a 4th time, I heard the HD spin down like normal, but the screen didn't go completely dark. It looked like I had just turned down the brightness to just barely the level where I could still see it. After that I could not wake the computer. I eventually had to hold the power button down until the computer did the forced shut down. Started up normally. Any other ideas?

BTW, thanks again for all the ideas so far.
Click to expand...

Hmm... Your iMac is challenging me! Try hardware check
 
I would love to try hardware check, but I seem to have misplaced the DVD that came with my computer. Do you know of any other way to run a hardware check, other than going into the Apple Store?
 
parrothead said:
I would love to try hardware check, but I seem to have misplaced the DVD that came with my computer. Do you know of any other way to run a hardware check, other than going into the Apple Store?
Click to expand...

No, you need install disk to do it :( You could buy Snow Leopard for 29$ and give it a try
 
I was able to run the Hardware Test using the disk from my wife's new Macbook. I ran the short test and got an fail code.

The code was 4MOT/1/40000002:CPU-0 :eek:

Does this mean that the CPU is bad on my computer or is it something else?
 
What are your temps, especially CPU? It's fan is spinning?

Edit: i have read on Apple Discussions about this error code and found that it's CPU fan failure related.
 
666sheep said:
What are your temps, especially CPU? It's fan is spinning?
Click to expand...

Not sure how to measure temps, but most of the time I do not hear the fan spinning unless I have been running a game for a while. Of course I haven't done that for a while since I get the sleeping problem when I am running games.
 
I made an appointment at my local Apple Store Genius bar. I tried searching for the error code but only got info about other people having trouble with fans and other things, none of the codes had CPU-0 in them.
 
I found that error code "4MOT/1/40000002:" refers to fan failure, and "CPU 0" (in other cases it could be "Exhaust" or other fan description) indicates exactly which fan failed. You can check temps and fan speeds with iStat to confirm it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back