MBP OSX Lion Sleep Issues

[autoaim]

I was unable to find a solution to this problem anywhere else, so here it goes:

When I close the lid on my 2011 MBP 15" with Lion it goes to sleep normally.
In the first couple of weeks with my MBP it would wake up normally from sleep. But now it gives me these screens when i open the lid:

Ignore the date, these are not my pictures.

This is naturally very annoying. I recently upgraded from 4 GB of RAM to 8 GB of RAM (fully compatible). I ran the built-in complete-RAM-check tool in boot-up, and everything was fine. I worked fine for some time after that, but now it gives me the two screens you see above.

I have bootcamp as well if that matters.
I don't know if I somehow changed some settings, but I don't think so.
If you know of a solution I will be very happy.

Thank you
/autoaim, Denmark.

 

[Makosuke]

The latter is a kernel panic, the standard OS crash screen. Normally that can be caused by:

A) A hardware problem.
B) Corruption of OS files on the hard drive, due either to a bad install or drive corruption.
C) Some low-level 3rd party add-on that's flaking out (either a hardware driver or system modification)


The former, however, is the screen you'll see if you put a Mac laptop to sleep and while asleep it loses power; on sleep, on a laptop, the MacOS saves an image of the RAM to the hard drive just in case it loses power while it's asleep (usually the battery dying, or on an older one the battery being removed). In that situation, when you turn the computer back on (after restoring power) it will read the data off the hard drive, put it back in RAM, and continue as if nothing had happened. It's effectively the same as the Hibernate command in Windows, if you're familiar with that.

So here's the question: When you wake it back up, do you just open the lid, or do you also have to push the power button? Normally, if the computer has shut down while asleep, just opening the lid won't be enough--you need to push the power button to turn it back on.

If you're not having to push the button, something on a fairly low level is going wrong convincing the computer that the sleep state data is no longer in RAM and needs to be restored. If you do have to push the button, something is killing the power while the computer is asleep.

Either way, it sounds somewhat more like a hardware problem than software, but you might try searching for "panic on wake" for suggestions from other people with the same problem.

You say you ran the built-in check--you mean Apple Hardware Test? And have you tried checking the hard drive for errors using Disk Utility?

 

[Mal]

Actually, that first image can also appear because OS X is checking and repairing the drive, usually due to detecting that the computer crashed previously. If you're seeing that often, as well as a kernel panic regularly, you're probably dealing with a failing drive or other hardware problem.

jW