Pbook turns off automatically in sleep mode

[Vanilla]

This afternoon the following happened to my PowerBook.

I'm in the office, close the lid, check the pulsing light is on and go out to lunch. Upon my return I found that the light was off and when I opened the lid nothing happened. I also noted that it was rather hot, which surprised me as normally it cools down while in sleep mode.

The only way out was to press and hold down the power button, which then triggered a normal startup. My temperature gauge confirmed that it was running at 50.5c which is the sort of temperature it gets to when I am working on it normally.

To double check everything was back to normal I closed the lid again, checked the pulsing light was on and then left it for an hour, (working on my office PC unfortunately). When I came back to it, the light was still on and it fired up fine on opening the lid. The temperature had also dropped down to 40c.

I've had the machine for about a month with no problems so this issue was quite a surprise.

The only thing I can think of was that yesterday for the first time I commuted back home from the office with the PBook in sleep mode rather than shutdown, which I used to do and I also came into work this morning with it in sleep mode, so its been up and running since yesterday morning.

I'm now going to go back to limiting sleep mode when in the office or at home and shutting down when commuting to see if that removes this new issue.

Does anyone have any ideas? Is this normal?

 

[jsw]

This is not normal behavior.

Perhaps there was a kernel panic? I don't own a newer PB or iBook (mine's 5 years old, and has never had a sleep problem). However, back when I was having problems with my G5 that turned out to be due to my monitor, one of the things it would do was, while going to sleep, actually have a kernel panic and essentially go nuts, turning the G5 afterburners on and ramping all the fans up to max - the thing sounded like a vacuum cleaner. A loud one. Anyway, this clearly sucked power. And it wouldn't respond to any normal attempt to shut it down. If something similar happened on a laptop, I'd expect it to burn through the battery and end up unresponsive and hot - like yours.

I don't know if this is similar or not, but I'm almost positive that your experience indicates a low-level problem.

 

[Celeron]

I think its pretty safe to say that your problem hasn't been caused by your transporting it while its asleep. I'm a student and I always walk to and from class with my laptop sleeping. I also drive home (3 1/2hours) with it sleeping. I've flown with the laptop in sleep mode. When its sleeping it is essentially off and only running a few processes in order to wake it back up.

Do you have any USB devices or a monitor plugged into the PB? These can cause it to wake up when its sleeping, even if the lid is closed. For example, plugging in or removing a USB device will cause the PB to wake up. Removing, or adding the monitor cable from the side, with a monitor connected, will make the machine wake up.

Based on what you mentioned, it seems that your PB waked up, which is the cause of the high temps you saw.

 

[jsw]

But that wouldn't explain why it was unresponsive.

 

[native00]

Vanilla: I'm almost positive that there has already been a thread about this...I remember it interesting me since my PB has had similar problems. I'll save you the time of looking for it by telling you that all the insights were inconclusive.

People were suggesting all kinds of speculations, but this behavior was still inexplicable...sorry.

 

[Vanilla]

Hi
Well thanks for the response everyone.

In terms of what did I have attached, it was plugged into the mains and remained so after I had put it to sleep. I also have a BT mouse which I had turned off prior to closing the lid, as I always do.

There are conflicting views about carrying it around while asleep. Some say its fine while others say there is a danger that some movement, inadvertant pressing together of the panels etc. could cause it to wake up in mid-commute.

Given that this is the only change in the way I interact with the machine it seemed logical to revert back to my usual routine to see if that removed the issue.

If it happens again then fine, I can officially tick that off the list of possibles and move on...on to where is the problem of course.

Ahh shucks, my switching experience was going so well up until this afternoon....

Vanilla