MBP won't sleep when on battery power?

[cubedweller]

Hey.. basically, whenever I unplug my MBP and leave it on (just playing music, or a TV show) when the album/show/movie is done, the laptop never goes to sleep... apparently. I come to the computer in the morning the computer appears to be off and i turn it on it goes to the grayed out screen with a white progress bar and a message about reserve power; the battery is all the way drained.

I have my power settings enabled and it's set to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity when using battery -- is this working as intended or is something wrong? I've formatted for other reasons and the problem persists. It's always occurred but it never bothered. It is a bit annoying though -- anyone else have this problem?

~E

 

[soberbrain]

See if these articles help:

Mac OS X: Why your Mac might not sleep or stay in sleep mode

Reset SMC

 

[cubedweller]

...I don't think so?

I don't see how anything I am doing would prevent it from sleeping; so when I'm playing music it shouldn't sleep -- this works as intended -- but when the album stops and it's just sitting there with iTunes open (and maybe FireFox open) -- and absolutely no usage, there is no reason why I should wake to find a dead battery and the laptop off.

I'd imagine that mine is just not functioning correctly as there would be tons more threads if this wasn't the case; I'm not a novice user either. I know my way around OS X, Windows, Linux (most distros) as I am a software engineer (primarily working in Unix/Linux environments).

This is really the only problem I've had with my MBP but it definitely should not function this way; when I watch a movie in VLC, when the movie is done, the laptop should sleep -- not sit there and drain the battery just because VLC is still opened -- I've tried this with many different applications and the results are the same; waking up to find the laptop dead and drained.

Basically, I'm afraid to use my laptop to watch TV at night (via Hulu, ABC.com, etc.) because it fails to sleep; drains the battery; and runs hot all night.... no one else has experienced this?