My G4 goes into sleep mode every 15 seconds

[rmlemons]

I have a Power PC G4, OS 10.4.11. Today, it started going into sleep mode while I was working on it. Hitting the space bar would bring it up again, but it would just go back down again in 15 seconds or so. I eventually navigated to shut down and kept waking it up long enough for it to shut down.

If I leave it off for a while, I can turn it on and work on it for about 10 minutes or so before it starts repeating the process.

What and why is it happening?

 

[Schroedinger]

If it's a powerbook it is likely a faulty temperature sensor that keeps giving your system an overheating warning so it goes to sleep. To check you can open up the application "Console" and on the left pick /var/log (I think) and under that you will find system.log. If you're having the heat sensor problem it should show up there.

Also, you can try to get a temperature monitor program and watch the readout. My sister's PB had this problem and while normal sensors move up and down in gentle curves, the broken sensor would jump up and down 20 or 30 degrees at a time, from freezing cold to boiling hot and back again.

Good luck.

 

[rmlemons]

it's a tower

It's a tower and I wondered if there was something going wrong with the power supply.

But Mac's never break!!!

 

[Dustman]

It's a tower and I wondered if there was something going wrong with the power supply.

But Mac's never break!!!

Oh, they break. I think your thinking of "Mac's never crash!!!" but even thats not exactly true lol