Mid-09 MBP Won't Wake From Sleep

[KUguardgrl13]

I've had this issue for about a year and a half and couldn't get Apple to fix it while I still had AppleCare. I have a 4 year old mid-2009 MBP. 2.26 ghz core duo with 2 GB RAM running OS X 10.6.8. The hard drive is 160 GB and was replaced just last year. Still HDD. The problem is that often when I put the machine to sleep either by closing the lid or selecting from the apple menu, the screen will not turn on when I try to wake it up. The sleep light will turn off, and the drive will start spinning, but no amount of mouse clicks or button presses will get it to respond without a hard restart. The only thing I ever got Apple to do was fix the planet or folder and ? of death on startup which probably resulted from the hard restarts. They replaced a couple of hard drive cables and the hard drive. Can't remember if they did the logic board as well. And yet it still continues to not wake properly. I've disabled safe sleep and gone to the "old" sleep mode 0 of the PowerBook era which seemed to fix it for short sleep periods but not for longer periods that involve travel. I've reset the smc or whatever but not the pram. I haven't felt comfortable doing that yet. I keep wondering of it has something to do with my magsafe that has gotten progressively worse over the last year. Getting it to connect and actually charge is a challenge anymore. It hasn't frayed yet, so I'm not sure of it's part of that recall. Anyway, I've read tons of forums and Apple support pages that don't seem to offer a long term fix for the not waking issue. I can't continue just working around it during my senior year of college, and I'd rather not drop $1000 USD or more to get a replacement, although I've seriously considered it. Any suggestions? Please and thank you!

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Does anyone out there have any answers to this, or is it time to get a replacement?

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Bump-Can someone out there please help me? I was hoping to have this MBP until I graduate next year. Is it worth the cost of replacing, or should I buy new MBP and sell this one for parts? I'd probably get the 13" non-retina with the 500 GB HDD and the i5. It's an improvement over the internals of what I have.

 

[AreYouAMac]

Is it still in sleep mode, or did you hold down the power button until it actually powered down? You're screen is most likely did if the hdd is spinning and the sleep light stops blinking. Replacing will still be a few hundred via apple - so I would replace if you can.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

It will boot up after a hard restart. The screen comes on with the white boot screen and the Apple logo. From that point it works with no problems unless it goes to sleep and then doesn't turn on as described above.

 

[thecurryman]

my old laptop used to have the same issue...i ended up selling it and buying a used one off craigslist to hold me over ( i too am in college and cannot afford >$1000 on a computer)

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Yeah I haven't found anyone that's been about to fix this problem, and Apple hasn't provided any answers. I'm pretty ticked that this is happening to a $1200 machine. Granted I've been lugging it around campus for 4 years.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Correction: I haven't reset the SMC or PRAM or any of that stuff. Though I would think that would've been one of the first things that Apple did when I had it in.

 

[Jameson.Kusch]

If this happened to me this is what I would do. I would first open up the macbook and then I would reset the ram by taking out the chips and then reinserting them. I would then take out the hard drive and then reinsert it.

Hopefully this solves your problem but if not, I would then reinstall the mac os you have to see if it fixes anything.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

I'll try the RAM and the hard drive when I can find the proper screw driver to open it up. Unfortunately reinstalling the os would put it back to leopard since that's the boot disk I have. Snow Leopard was put on by a certified service place when they replaced the hard drive, and they didn't give me a disk for SL. Oh well. I might take it into an Apple store tomorrow to see what repairs would cost vs. purchasing a new one.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Genius Bar was booked full today, but I did check my console logs. I'm getting:

Sleep: Platform Failure - BATT 96 and AC 77

Failed to find ACPI device and/or SMC after timer expired. Exit!

Previous Shutdown Cause: 3

The USB device Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad (Port 6 of Hub at 0x4000000) may have caused a wake by issuing a remote wakeup (2)

no spins reported for this wake

Also the battery indicator on the menu bar says:

Battery Is Not Charging
Power Source: Power Adapter

 

[duervo]

May not fix your issue, but I would try to disable the SMS and see if your problem goes away:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1935

If it fixes it, then I would replace the HDD with an SSD and keep the SMS disabled.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

I'll definitely give it a try! The problem seems to be aggrevated when I put the MBP in my backpack and walk a ways up and down stairs (my campus is rather hilly). Wonder if several years trucking around campus has burnt it out!

 

[KUguardgrl13]

May not fix your issue, but I would try to disable the SMS and see if your problem goes away:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1935

If it fixes it, then I would replace the HDD with an SSD and keep the SMS disabled.

It seems to be working for now. Will continue to keep an eye on it for the next couple of days. Thanks!

 

[duervo]

It seems to be working for now. Will continue to keep an eye on it for the next couple of days. Thanks!

If it does appear to fix the issue, then I would guess that you may not be waiting long enough for your laptop to completely go to sleep before putting it into your backpack. The jolt to the HDD of putting your system in your backpack before it's completely asleep could be triggering the SMS, which in turn could be causing your issue.

If I were in your position, I would just upgrade your HDD to an SSD, and keep the SMS disabled. You can then continue doing as you normally do, and your system will also be much quicker overall. A win-win!

SSDs are much, much faster anyway, and don't require SMS to be enabled as there are no moving parts like there are in a traditional HDD.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

I'll look into an SSD. Already posted a new thread to get suggestions. Unfortunately money is an issue. In terms of waiting for it to go to sleep before storing it, the last year or so I've been waiting for the light to start pulsing before closing the lid and putting it in an Incase sleeve and then into my bag. Back when I first got it, I did tend to be impatient and not wait. Could that still be an issue even after I've been more careful?

 

[duervo]

I'll look into an SSD. Already posted a new thread to get suggestions. Unfortunately money is an issue. In terms of waiting for it to go to sleep before storing it, the last year or so I've been waiting for the light to start pulsing before closing the lid and putting it in an Incase sleeve and then into my bag. Back when I first got it, I did tend to be impatient and not wait. Could that still be an issue even after I've been more careful?

Maybe, especially if it's the same drive in it now that was in it before you changed your habit. But it's tough to say.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Maybe, especially if it's the same drive in it now that was in it before you changed your habit. But it's tough to say.

Had a new drive installed almost a year ago while under AppleCare. Disk Utility says it has some sort of corruption which I would guess is from the hard restarts. It still boots up fine though after a shutdown or when the sleep issue isn't happening. I've attached a screen shot of what Disk Utility says.

 

[duervo]

Had a new drive installed almost a year ago while under AppleCare. Disk Utility says it has some sort of corruption which I would guess is from the hard restarts. It still boots up fine though after a shutdown or when the sleep issue isn't happening. I've attached a screen shot of what Disk Utility says.

Yeah, those errors will require you to boot the system from the install media that came with it when you bought it, and then run Disk Utility from the OS X Installer to fix it. This is because it cannot make repairs for a drive that is currently mounted (which it will be when you boot the system from the HDD.)

On a somewhat related note, once you get the SSD upgrade over with, budget allowing, a bump up in RAM from your current 2GB to maybe 4GB or 8GB couldn't hurt either. With Snow Leopard, 4GB should be lots. However, if you plan on running Mountain Lion with that system, I'd personally go with 8GB.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Yeah, those errors will require you to boot the system from the install media that came with it when you bought it, and then run Disk Utility from the OS X Installer to fix it. This is because it cannot make repairs for a drive that is currently mounted (which it will be when you boot the system from the HDD.)

On a somewhat related note, once you get the SSD upgrade over with, budget allowing, a bump up in RAM from your current 2GB to maybe 4GB or 8GB couldn't hurt either. With Snow Leopard, 4GB should be lots. However, if you plan on running Mountain Lion with that system, I'd personally go with 8GB.

I'm running Snow Leopard, but I only have a disc for Leopard. SL was installed by an authorized service provider, and they didn't provide me with a disc. Is there a way to use the Leopard disc to repair my HDD and still recover Snow Leopard? I have time machine backups on an external drive.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

So unfortunately it appears that SMS was not the reason for the sleep issue. Thank you so much for your help though! I think I I need to get it looked over by Apple to determine of it will be less expensive to repair or replace.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

Yeah, those errors will require you to boot the system from the install media that came with it when you bought it, and then run Disk Utility from the OS X Installer to fix it. This is because it cannot make repairs for a drive that is currently mounted (which it will be when you boot the system from the HDD.)

On a somewhat related note, once you get the SSD upgrade over with, budget allowing, a bump up in RAM from your current 2GB to maybe 4GB or 8GB couldn't hurt either. With Snow Leopard, 4GB should be lots. However, if you plan on running Mountain Lion with that system, I'd personally go with 8GB.

UPDATE: took it to the Apple Store today. It actually replicated the sleep issue at the Genius Bar. After running some tests they're going to replace the corrupt drive and run a full diagnostic at no charge even though my AppleCare ran out! Also got a replacement MagSafe. Hopefully this means the end of my computer woes for now. Since they're not charging me for the hard drive and such I think I might upgrade the RAM later on and get ML.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

UPDATE: Just got it back from the Apple Store today with a new 500 gb hard drive and a new hard drive cable as well as a new MagSafe they gave me when I dropped it off. The geniuses didn't transfer the data from the old drive, so ill need to transfer from time machine. Will report how things are after I do that.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

UPDATE: Just got it back from the Apple Store today with a new 500 gb hard drive and a new hard drive cable as well as a new MagSafe they gave me when I dropped it off. The geniuses didn't transfer the data from the old drive, so ill need to transfer from time machine. Will report how things are after I do that.

So far so good! Recovering my data from the backup was successful, and it has woken up properly twice.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

If it does appear to fix the issue, then I would guess that you may not be waiting long enough for your laptop to completely go to sleep before putting it into your backpack. The jolt to the HDD of putting your system in your backpack before it's completely asleep could be triggering the SMS, which in turn could be causing your issue.

If I were in your position, I would just upgrade your HDD to an SSD, and keep the SMS disabled. You can then continue doing as you normally do, and your system will also be much quicker overall. A win-win!

SSDs are much, much faster anyway, and don't require SMS to be enabled as there are no moving parts like there are in a traditional HDD.

Despite Apple installing a new hard drive and new hd cable, the sleep issue has resurfaced. Suppose ill need to contact them and say the repair didn't work.