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Macbook Won't Sleep?!

F

frogcat

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 9, 2007
86
0
My macbook is having some weird issues trying to sleep/hibernate.

Whenever I am using a USB port, I shut the lid to put the macbook asleep, and then remove the USB. After doing so, the macbook will just wake itself up. I check the system logs and it looks like it sleeps itself and wakes itself until it runs the battery dry.

I actually charged it Full one morning, put it in my bag for school, and when I took it out to use (5 hours later), it was out of battery.

If someone could help me figure this issue out, it would be greatly appreciated. I was wondering if someone could test this on their macbook. Put in any USB drive, mouse, keyboard, and shut the lid. Wait and see if your sleep light will pulsate, or see if it wakes up. It takes about 15 secs.


Thanks a lot guys.
 
Any Apple device in sleep mode will wake up upon virtually any USB activity. If you have an external hard drive that performs automatic maintenance, the Mac will wake. If you unplug a mouse, the Mac will wake. If you plug in a USB pen, the Mac will wake.

You get the idea.

However, it should sleep again after it discovers the lid is closed (only applicable on notebook Macs) and failure to do so may indicate a fault somewhere along the line. An exception to this is if you say, remove a device without ejecting it first, the warning message will halt the sleep demand until it is dismissed.
 
Well, I am actually using the Aluminum macbook, and my old black macbook did not have this issue. I could plug in my printer, close my laptop, and there would be no sleep issue.

However, with this laptop, it just recurs the cycle of sleeping and waking up until my battery dies.

And I know there have been threads around here on this, but none of them really answers what I want to find out. I want to see if someone is able to try this on their Aluminum macbook, and have it run properly. If it doesn't for most then it must be a firmware issue.

I want to see if I should take it to the Apple store or wait for a firmware fix.
 
Shutdown the machine, take out the battery for a few minutes and put it back in. This will reset the system power module and might help fix the issue.
 
StuBeck said:
Shutdown the machine, take out the battery for a few minutes and put it back in. This will reset the system power module and might help fix the issue.
Click to expand...

Resetting the SMC is not as simple as just removing the battery, but it's pretty close. Instructions are HERE

From what I've gathered, the culprit is Safe Sleep. When you close the lid, information on active processes are temporarily stored in the RAM, which is then written to the hard drive in case of a total power failure. I ran across an article in the Apple KB today, which led me to http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/smartsleep.html.

This utility will let you put your Macbook into normal sleep without having anything written to the HD until your battery reaches a low enough level (that you define). I tried it and during the time that I had my unibody asleep during class today, the battery didn't seem to drain as fast as did before.
 
Sorry for the double post, but I wanted to get an update in:

I installed the SmartSleep prefpane and set my system to hibernate only when the battery reaches 20% capacity. I also zapped my SMC and then put my machine to sleep last night, unplugged.

Woke up 8 hours later with only 5% drain.
 
frogcat said:
My macbook is having some weird issues trying to sleep/hibernate.

Whenever I am using a USB port, I shut the lid to put the macbook asleep, and then remove the USB. After doing so, the macbook will just wake itself up. I check the system logs and it looks like it sleeps itself and wakes itself until it runs the battery dry.

I actually charged it Full one morning, put it in my bag for school, and when I took it out to use (5 hours later), it was out of battery.

If someone could help me figure this issue out, it would be greatly appreciated. I was wondering if someone could test this on their macbook. Put in any USB drive, mouse, keyboard, and shut the lid. Wait and see if your sleep light will pulsate, or see if it wakes up. It takes about 15 secs.


Thanks a lot guys.
Click to expand...

The same exact thing happened to me today, and in addition to it being out of battery, my machine was really, really warm.

I had a mouse connected to my computer so it obviously has something to do with USB.
 
jasonmac31 said:
The same exact thing happened to me today, and in addition to it being out of battery, my machine was really, really warm.

I had a mouse connected to my computer so it obviously has something to do with USB.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you know I didn't think it would work but I restarted the SMC. For now the problem seems to have fixed itself.

I'll report back if it happens again.
 
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