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Macbook Pro will not shutdown properly or sleep.

E

erm....

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 17, 2010
3
0
Hi everyone!!

First time I've needed to post on this forum before! I'm no exactly a technological genius, so if anyone replies to this would it be possible to explain everything in layman's terms! Thank you.

Basically, my macbook pro 13.3" (snow leopard - 10.6.2) will not shut down or sleep.

I go to shut it down from the apple menu, it attempts to go through all the stages needed for a shut down, the screen goes black like normal, and then it restarts again (so, while, it nearly gets to the end of shut down, it never quite makes it, and starts up again!) The same thing happens when I decide to restart - there is no pause between shutting down and restarting, indicating that it does nor restart at all.

It does not sleep either. I put the lid down and everything is still going inside the laptop!

I hope that's a good enough explanation of what's happening!

The only way I can shut the computer down is by pressing the power button in the top right hand corner of my macbook - forcing a shut down.

I've tried resetting the PRAM and repairing disk utility but it has done absolutely nothing.

I would do a clean install of snow leopard but I have a Microsoft office on my mac and I really do not want to lose my installation of it, since it was expensive!

---------------

The only thing I have done since the last proper shut down is:
- transport my macbook from home to university;
- downloaded the most up to date version of DivX player (since my computer asked me whether I wanted to).
- created a time machine backup (and in this process partitioning the hard drive used for the backup into two (one for the TM backup in format: 'Mac OS Extended journaled' and the other as a cross platform between windows and a mac in format 'FAT32') - did this using disk utility. Once i'd set up time machine it proceeded to backup my entire computer.
- Placed various files into my Fat32 section of my external hard drive (created before).
- Updated Sophos anti-virus.
- Tidied the files on my computer (such as documents etc... - nothing important I do not think).

.....do you think any of these are relevant to my problems? If not, as i have apple care and i've only had it 6 months, i'll take the computer into my nearest apple shop and have them take a look at it, only I can't really do this until Tuesday because I have exams to revise for so would rather it fixed now, than having to wait so long!

Thank you for ANY help or enlightenment you can give me!
xxx

Edit 1:
I've also noticed, just, that the screen sometimes goes black. I think this is happening when this is a surge of loading on my computer - if that makes sense!!

Edit 2:
I think the battery is also being very slow to charge... it's said it will take 10 mins to get from 97% to full charge. It's not on 99% and has taken about 20 mins to get there and it still estimates it'll take 9 mins to get to full charge. OK, it's now saying it'll take 15 mins until fully charged. And NOW, it says it's fully charged (when 5 secs ago it said it'd take 15 mins!)

Could this whole issue be something to do with the battery then?
 
Hi there

I would not worry about the battery charging issue, after a relatively short period of time, any laptop battery is unable to sustain 100% of it's battery charge, hence the reason it flicks from 'i'm nearly there, to i'm full' without apparent explanation.

Have you booted up, off the snow leopard DVD and used disk utility to verify and repair disk permissions? (rather than just disk first aid, which you've implied)

Also whats the issue with Office? You do know that if you've bought it, you have the dvd and therefore you can install it again once you've formatted and reinstalled the machine?

(Software doesn't operate on a you can only install it once basis!)

Hope this helps

Alex.
 
moel said:
Hi there

I would not worry about the battery charging issue, after a relatively short period of time, any laptop battery is unable to sustain 100% of it's battery charge, hence the reason it flicks from 'i'm nearly there, to i'm full' without apparent explanation.

Have you booted up, off the snow leopard DVD and used disk utility to verify and repair disk permissions? (rather than just disk first aid, which you've implied)

Also whats the issue with Office? You do know that if you've bought it, you have the dvd and therefore you can install it again once you've formatted and reinstalled the machine?

(Software doesn't operate on a you can only install it once basis!)

Hope this helps

Alex.
Click to expand...

Brilliant - thank you for such a quick response!

I bought the Microsoft office for mac and it said I could only install it on 2 machines?? Does this mean I can install it on my particular machine as many times as I want since my computer is one of the 'two machines'??!!

Sorry to be a pain, how would I go about installing off the snow leopard dvd? (would I need to install off leopard first and then use my upgrade dvd to get snow leopard?).
 
Not 100% but i believe that it means, you could install it on your mac and another mac on the same network and they won't scream blue murder at each other.

But yeah..i wouldn't worry it doesn't know how many times it's been installed on anything!!!

As for reinstallation, just put the Snow Leopard DVD into the macbook, turn the machine on...hold down either C or the 'option key' (thats alt to mac newbies such as yourself), if you push c it should boot up from the DVD straight away, hold down alt and it'll bring up a picture of your hd and a picture of the dvd, allowing you to pick which one you want.

Once you've booted up from the dvd you can just reinstall the system by following the prompts, it won't btw wipe the HD as it doesn't need to, it'll just replace the system folder..so you won't need to reinstall office anyway.

Finally i would RECOMMEND that you start from the snow leopard dvd, click on the utilities menu when it's loaded, click disk utility and verify the disk permissions.
 
Macbook pro goes to sleep - won't wake up???

Hi All,
I have just the opposite problem. If anyone can shed some light on this I would be grateful.

I purchased my first Mac back in November, a Macbook Pro 15". About a month into owership it sarted going to sleep during boot up and I was unable to wake it up or reboot the machine. My local Apple store was helpful enough and replaced the machine in Mid December.

Now mid January the replacement machine is behaving the same way. There is a weird part. This new machine goes to sleep at random times also just like the first, but I've noticed while talking with apple tech support that as I lifted the machine, tilting its right side up at about a 45 degree angle the screen comes back on. Unfortunately as soon as I set it on the table it goes off again.

Tech support suggested on this second machine as on the first it is a hardware issue.

Question 1: Can this be somehow related to my use of the machine? (I have had a cheep dell PC for over 6 years with no "handling" related issues.)

Questions 2: has anyone else experienced trouble with Macbook pro 15" going to sleep??

Thanks for any help.

Oh... BTW Tech support suggests the problem is somehow related to the cover close-sleep sensor within the front of the machine.
 
moel said:
Not 100% but i believe that it means, you could install it on your mac and another mac on the same network and they won't scream blue murder at each other.

But yeah..i wouldn't worry it doesn't know how many times it's been installed on anything!!!

As for reinstallation, just put the Snow Leopard DVD into the macbook, turn the machine on...hold down either C or the 'option key' (thats alt to mac newbies such as yourself), if you push c it should boot up from the DVD straight away, hold down alt and it'll bring up a picture of your hd and a picture of the dvd, allowing you to pick which one you want.

Once you've booted up from the dvd you can just reinstall the system by following the prompts, it won't btw wipe the HD as it doesn't need to, it'll just replace the system folder..so you won't need to reinstall office anyway.

Finally i would RECOMMEND that you start from the snow leopard dvd, click on the utilities menu when it's loaded, click disk utility and verify the disk permissions.
Click to expand...

Hi again,

Right, I tried what you suggested and it still does the same thing.

Upon verifying disk permissions this appears:
Warning: SUID file "system/ library/cores... as been modified and will not be repaired.

could this have anything to do with why it's still not working?
 
erm.... said:
Hi again,

Right, I tried what you suggested and it still does the same thing.

Upon verifying disk permissions this appears:
Warning: SUID file "system/ library/cores... as been modified and will not be repaired.

could this have anything to do with why it's still not working?
Click to expand...

All I can say is that if I had this problem and got the above message when repairing from a boot disk I would be organizing my programs and backups to prepare for a format of the drive and a fresh install of the operating system. In other words, back up your data, get out all of your program install disks, make a list of the software you installed from the web, and get a good night sleep. Boot from the 10.6 disk, go to disk utility, and erase/reformat the drive. Following that, do a system install, and reinstall only software you can trust completely. If everything works, reinstall web-based software one at a time and test. It is possible that something you installed screwed up your system, so use the computer for awhile after installing each program. If things get wonky again, you will have to repeat the whole process but you should be able to identify the program that messed things up and avoid it.

But, before I did all this though, I'd do a search on apple's support pages for problems with sleeping and shutting down. This is not an unheard of problem, it's just that my memory doesn't allow me to remember the solution, so you'll have to search yourself. It seems to me that there are some pref files that should be deleted. If this solves the problem, then great. Unless, of course, it all happens again, in which case you will need to find the culprit.

If that doesn't work, go to paragraph 1.

Do you have any other symptoms?


Mooch
 
Same Problem

I have a old but still working powermac g4 and I have been having the same problem, however my system will sleep.

Strange thing is, I just did a Time Machine Backup.

I don't know if thats a just a coincidence or not but I would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks in advance.
 
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