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Macbook sleep/wake problem

M

mustgroove

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 14, 2006
203
12
My Macbook is displaying an annoying problem with sleeping... When you put the lid down, the little white light on the bottom right hand corner of the machine starts pulsing like normal, but if you leave it and come back in roughly half an hour to an hour, the light is no longer pulsing, it's just on solid... And when you open the lid, the whole OS has stalled - the mouse button doesn't work, and after about 10 seconds the little coloured beachball cursor appears and the only way to recover is to hold the power button down till it shuts off..

What's going on? Anybody have any ideas or any possible solutions? Any help would be much appreciated.... :)
 
Weird. So it's waking itself up and then freezing...

What apps are running when you sleep it? Do you have any hacks installed and what sort of third party hardware is attached? IS it plugged into the adaptor?

As a start, I'd attempt a PMU reset and then maybe try running fsck. Also, I'd shut it down and re-seat the battery. :)
 
First couple times it was running Firefox and Word 2004... the last time, it was just running Firefox...

Yes it's plugged into the mains adaptor... No hacks, lots of third-party software... It also has 2GB of third-party RAM (Kingston Macbook System select sticks) which have tested perfectly under MemtestOSX...

I should also say that when it "wakes up" from this kind of dodgy sleep where the light is on solid, the Superdrive does not make that ejecting sound it does when it wakes up from a "proper" sleep... maybe that means something, I'm not sure...
 
So you're there when it wakes up? FWIW, those memory testers aren't perfect and, to be honest, don't really mean anything. It could be a memory issue but I'd try the PMU reset, fsck and battery re-seat first. I think this is more likely a power issue (PMU). :)
 
Hmmm the thing's less than a week old, very frustrating...

I'm there when it wakes up because I'm the one who opens the lid... Each time it's happened I've closed the lid (and I also tried hitting the power button and selecting Sleep from the popup window) and been there to verify that the sleep light starts pulsing... then I walk away...

Then when I come back after more than half an hour or so, the lid is still closed but the light is on solid rather than pulsing... So I open the lid and bam, no mouse clicks and the whole thing goes beachbally in no time...

Will try the PMU thing, that seems the most likely thing to me... I did try repairing permissions today to try & see if that fixed it, but no love...


/edit I should also mention that I have a Logitech Bluetooth mouse which I always forget to turn off when the machine sleeps, maybe that has something to do with it?
 
OK so I decided to close the lid and sit here & watch what it did - after all, it seemed to go from OK to weird in about half an hour... Slept like a baby at first...

So right the half-hour mark or thereabouts, the CD drive makes that eject sound 3 times in a row, during which time the light is on solid...

Then the light starts to pulse again... But then the eject noise happens again, but this time is goes straight back to pulsing...

About 30 seconds later, no more CD drive eject noises, but the light is no longer pulsing...

This is ****ED UP!!! It seems pretty random & weird... I have a theory that it's related to the bluetooth mouse, which I've noticed spontaneously disconnects itself from the host machine after about half an hour's worth of inactivity... I'll reboot & sleep it overnight with the mouse off & see what's what tomororrow morning...
 
I think you're onto something with that mouse. Pull the power from the mouse and leave it overnight to see if it still happens. Are you running the latest drivers? :)
 
The mouse has no OS X drivers, it just works basically... :)

The machine's been asleep for about 20 minutes now, with the mouse off the whole time... let's see if it screws up again...
 
Okay, but maybe check the Logitech site all the same. This could be a problem that a driver update fixes. Of course, wait to see whether you have any problems with the mouse disconnected first though. :)
 
Logitech site says:

"No Logitech software is required to use the V270 Cordless Optical Notebook Mouse for Bluetooth with a Macintosh computer."

It then gives details about how to connect the device through the Bluetooth menu...

It's been roughly half an hour now - no noises and the light is still pulsing, so maybe the mouse was it after all...
 
Me too

Similar issue with my iBook. The OS stalls while the laptop is in sleep mode.
I have additional issue of kernel panics and it seems that both these issues are related to RAM. I have been advised by APPLE to get my RAM checked.

Good luck with yours'. Looks like a faulty memmory.
 
I love it when my gut intuition says something and it ends up being proved right.... :)

The machine slept like a baby overnight with the mouse off... no dramas whatsoever...

So the lesson here kiddies is to turn off your bluetooth mice when you send your Macbook to sleep, because if you don't, they'll crash your machine when they try and disconnect after idle time to save their own power...

:D
 
Ata guess, I reckon this'll be a problem pretty unique to the Logitech mouse. Hopefully it'll either get fixed by Apple in a Bluetooth update or by Logitech in the form of a post-purchase driver upgrade.


findpankaj said:
I have additional issue of kernel panics and it seems that both these issues are related to RAM. I have been advised by APPLE to get my RAM checked.
Click to expand...


The best way to check RAM is to take it out and see if the problems persist. Software-based memory checkers are a waste of time. :)
 
Huray... my macbook was doing the same thing... I was asleep on the couch and the cd drive was going crazy while the notebook was supposed to be asleep.

I have a v270 bluetooth mouse. I guess it is the mouse then. But lacky me, the system did not hang. Will turn off the mouse next time. Usually do, just forgot this time. Thank you...
 
same problem too...

i have the most basic macbook, had it since last july, had the logicboard changed due to random shutdown, and just recently, it started having problems waking up.

i never have bluetooth on, so it's not that, and there's no additional peripherals on.

when i wake it from an especially long sleep (1 hour +), whether the lid is closed or from timed sleep, it doesn't complete the wake up. the screen brightness controls still work, the volume buttons, the num and cam lock lights respond, and so does the eject key (you can hear it trying to eject something).

the only thing i can think of that of with the system is that i changed the it so it required the password to turn on. it was fine in the beginning, but after a few times, it would prompt the password, then stall. then i turned the password off, and it would stall anyway.

help?
 
I am having the same problem! I close the lid, and the superdrive starts looking for something, you can hear it doing it's search, although there is nothing in there. The bluetooth icon (although BT is off) gives me a squiggly line through the BT icon. I can't seem to get into the BT preferences even though I know I have it installed. It just says it's unavailable.


I reset the pram. I also did a reinstall/archive of Tiger w/ all new updates. Repaired permissions and verified drive.

The only thing i haven't ran is an fsck.

I have no bluetooth mice, or anything plugged into it at all! I did install "missingSync" for my blackjack. Does anyone think this could cause it? Any similar problems?

LC
 
I just ran an fsck -fy and it did nothing. When I rebooted, my BT icon still has the squiggly line through it and claims it's unavailable. Going to uninstall MissingSync.

lc
 
Ok, uninstalled missingSync and restarted.

Looks like BT is up again.... I'll check and post later if i still have the wake/sleep problems.

lc
 
The squiggly line through the bluetooth icon has been coming and going on my MacBook for a few weeks (it's there about 80% of the time).

It won't sleep when the squiggly line is there. It tries to but the light in front of the right side of the keyboard never pulses (it instead stays on when the laptop lid is closed) and the the laptop cycles through spinning up the optical drive every few minutes (I haven't timed it, but that's the approx frequency).

When BT is working, I keep it disabled, undiscoverable, un-wakeable, and have the setup assistant (for input devices) disabled. I have no USB/firewire/BT/audio devices connected and nothing in the optical drive. Wake on LAN is also disabled. I'm not connected to a LAN, though I'm usually (but not always) connected via wifi. I don't have Missing Sync installed (or any other applications that would cause this that I'm aware of).

In fact when I started typing this post, the squiggle line was there. Now it's gone and BT is available to me again. It's been unavailable for a few days and based on past behavior, I expect the squiggly line to return later today or tomorrow.

Not sure if this is relevant, but each time BT becomes available again, it comes back enabled even though I'd disabled it before the squiggly line appeared.

Stuff I've tried:
  1. reboot
  2. verified/repaired permissions
  3. repaired the disk
  4. reset the PRAM
  5. wiped BT plist files
  6. logged out out of my usual user account and tried a different account
  7. rebooted fresh and logged in as a different user
None of that has fixed the problem. Any thoughts?
 
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