MBP screen dims and undims, doesn’t put itself to sleep

[devburke]

For for awhile now I’ve been noticing my 13” 2010 MBP’s screen occasionally dimming and undimming during use. This happens very quickly, it only takes about half a second to a second. It happens a lot. When I actually just leave it idle, the screen will dim just fine.

(Not exactly related, but I’ve also noticed that if my display goes to sleep and I wake it up immediately, it requires a password to unlock, but the password box is over all my windows instead of a black backdrop. It shouldn’t be asking for a password at all, because I tell it to only after a minute, and if I wait a few seconds before waking it up, it doesn’t ask for a password.)

I’ve also noticed something that may or may not be related. My MBP never puts itself to sleep after standing idle. It’s not because of any programs I have running because it even happens if I restart and leave it in the login screen. It has no problem sleeping if I tell it to manually. It’s set to go to sleep after 10 minutes, but it doesn’t.

It just occurred to me as I was writing this that Prey could be preventing it from sleeping. I have it set to report every 5 minutes, so it shouldn’t have mattered when I set my computer to sleep after 1 minute, but it’s something I haven’t tested yet, so maybe.

Anyway, anyone got any ideas what’s going on?