Mac has trouble waking up

[jasimon9]

For the last several weeks at least, my system has been having trouble waking up from sleep, and sometimes it is quite difficult to get it awake.

This has been happening with 10.5.8 and 10.5.7.

What sometimes happens is that the login screen appears. If I don't login right away, it disappears leaving a black screen and cursor only. And stays in that state, so there is nothing that can be done to get it going via mouse or keyboard.

The workaround is to press the power button briefly, and put it back to full sleep, then press it again.

I am thinking of powering it off each night, like we used to do with Windows back in the 90's due to its instability issues. Too bad!

 

[Kirkafur]

The same thing has been happening to me with the Mac described in my sig.

 

[tekio]

Mine was doing that but after uninstalling vmware fusion it hasn't done it since.

 

[dumoon]

Same thing happens to me periodically and I'm running 10.4.

 

[celticpride678]

I know that CNetTV has a video to try and solve Mac Sleep Issues. Go to Cnettv.com and search for Solving Mac Sleep or something similar. There are two videos you would want to watch and think about.

 

[Mugwumper]

Any "hinky" USB devices?

For the last several weeks at least, my system has been having trouble waking up from sleep, and sometimes it is quite difficult to get it awake.

This has been happening with 10.5.8 and 10.5.7.

What sometimes happens is that the login screen appears. If I don't login right away, it disappears leaving a black screen and cursor only. And stays in that state, so there is nothing that can be done to get it going via mouse or keyboard.

The workaround is to press the power button briefly, and put it back to full sleep, then press it again.

I am thinking of powering it off each night, like we used to do with Windows back in the 90's due to its instability issues. Too bad!

Do you have any USB devices that might be on (or off) or getting recycled
in the sleep process?

I've been setting my iMac to go to sleep at night after 1 hour of iTunes
(using iTunes Alarm), and it's always fine in the morning. This has been
true from 10.5.4 to .8 now. I only do restarts when a new dot upgrade
happens or some other piece of software needs it.

All my USB devices are on a powered Belkin hub, except for the keyboard
and mouse. I used to have sleep and wake problems until I got the hub,
and also have noticed problems when my older keyboard began to fail.

Hope this helps . . .

 

[jasimon9]

Mine was doing that but after uninstalling vmware fusion it hasn't done it since.

Interesting you should say that, as I am running VMWare Fusion.

The odd thing is that during the wake up process, many apps are often non-responsive (Firefox is the worst), but VMWare is not. That is, it appears to resume normally.

In fact, it has been amazing me that after the system does wake up, and I kill off all the non-responsive apps, VMWare is running fine, and Windows XP is running fine, not only with networking working ok, but the VPN in windows is even working (native XP for me often has had issues with any kind of networking after waking up).

In short, Windows networking after wake up works better in VMWare than it does natively.

 

[jasimon9]

Do you have any USB devices that might be on (or off) or getting recycled
in the sleep process?

I've been setting my iMac to go to sleep at night after 1 hour of iTunes
(using iTunes Alarm), and it's always fine in the morning. This has been
true from 10.5.4 to .8 now. I only do restarts when a new dot upgrade
happens or some other piece of software needs it.

All my USB devices are on a powered Belkin hub, except for the keyboard
and mouse. I used to have sleep and wake problems until I got the hub,
and also have noticed problems when my older keyboard began to fail.

Hope this helps . . .

Thanks for the input.

USB keyboard, mouse, printer, and Seagate FreeAgent.

But without more information in this area, I would consider this a bit circumstantial. That is, kind of like a shot in the dark rather than something that is a known requirement for stability.

Anybody else finding the USB relationship?

 

[jasimon9]

I know that CNetTV has a video to try and solve Mac Sleep Issues. Go to Cnettv.com and search for Solving Mac Sleep or something similar. There are two videos you would want to watch and think about.

I did find a video at http://cnettv.cnet.com/fix-mac-sleep-problems/9742-1_53-50005533.html.

However, this video is 100% concerned with "going to sleep", not "waking up from sleep."

There were some other pages, but I did not find a video.

However I did find a page at http://www.mac-lab.com/2009/03/solution-to-macbook-pro-that-wont-wake-from-sleep/ that implicates TimeMachine, which I also am using.

 

[Kirkafur]

I have an external secondary display. When the screensaver time is up, the screen goes blank and the second display shows it's 'no input' message for a few seconds then shuts off. Fine.

I thought maybe the recent bout with no login box might have been something with my other display.

 

[jasimon9]

For the last several weeks at least, my system has been having trouble waking up from sleep, and sometimes it is quite difficult to get it awake.

This has been happening with 10.5.8 and 10.5.7.

What sometimes happens is that the login screen appears. If I don't login right away, it disappears leaving a black screen and cursor only. And stays in that state, so there is nothing that can be done to get it going via mouse or keyboard.

The workaround is to press the power button briefly, and put it back to full sleep, then press it again.

I am thinking of powering it off each night, like we used to do with Windows back in the 90's due to its instability issues. Too bad!

Lately I have made some changes, as implied in the original question. For the moment, it seems they may have helped, though more observation is needed.

The changes are as follows:

1. No longer require a password when coming back from sleep or screen saver. This has the advantage of not trying to go through the login screen, where the lockups seems to be happening.

2. No longer leave Firefox or VMWare running overnight through the sleep period. These are obvious workarounds, because at least 90% of the time in the morning, Firefox is locked up after the system resumes from sleep (and I have sent in the error report to Apple dozens of times), and VMWare has been implicated by others in connection with this problem, although I have not seen a definite correlation.