Shutdown on Wake Issue

Hey Everyone,

Right now I am in the middle of a frustrating and lengthy troubleshooting process trying to resolve an issue that started about a month ago. Given the intermittent nature of the problem, I have been having a terrible time getting much help from apple. Here's the scoop...


Relevant Recent Events:

- About a month ago I installed Snow Leopard on my mac. Everything went fine and the machine was working well after the installation.

- However, about a week after the installation, our street got hit with a nasty power surge. The surge protector I had for my machine blew, but as far as I could tell, the machine was unharmed. (Still started up, ran fine, etc.)


The Problem:

About four or so days after the surge I experienced one odd behavior with the computer that had never happened before. After putting the machine to sleep, I hit the spacebar to wake it several minutes later and instead of waking up, it immediately shut down.

I was able to power the computer up right after without issue and couldn't find any other immediate problems.

I tried sleeping it and waking the machine several times and nothing seemed to go wrong. Then, just when I thought I was safe, it did it again.

Basically, the machine sleeps fine. Or it appears to. The white light on the front slowly pulses. However, as soon as you hit the keyboard or click the mouse to wake the machine from sleep, it shuts down. This occurs intermittently, but enough to be quite a bother. (Sometimes it happens several times within the hour.)


Troubleshooting:

After this happened five or so times, I decided it was serious (and definitely getting in the way of my work) so I took it into an apple store to have them fix it. Not so fast. Of course as is always the case, the machine wouldn't preform the behavior at the store. So, I was sent home.

And, of course, as soon as I got home it shutdown when I tried to wake it.

So I called Apple Care and started the basic troubleshooting steps with an agent.

- Reset SMC
- Reset PRAM
- Verify Start-up Disk
- Repair Permissions
- Run machine with all unnecessary peripherals removed (iPod, printer, ethernet connection etc.)

None of these seemed to help and I got bumped to a specialist. He suggested the following over the course of a few phone calls.

- Run Apple Hardware Test (x2)
- Check Energy Saver Preferences
- Reinstall Snow Leopard as an upgrade
- Run machine on a different outlet without any surge protector (direct to outlet power supply)

I have tried all these things and the issue still persists, even after a reinstall of the OS. My instincts say something is likely wrong with either the power supply or possibly the SMC.

After yet another call with Apple, I have tried the following additional steps:

- Ran Apple Hardware Test (x10) = passed all
- Installed SL on a clean HD
- Ran the Machine with various RAM configurations

With each one of these steps I was able to replicate the shutdown issue.

Things I have NOT tried... yet:

- Hitting my computer with a stick/sledgehammer
- Praying to the gods


Console Logs:

Before I tried many of these steps, I was browsing the log files to see if I could find anything of interest and came across this:

A normal sleep diagnostic message gets recorded like this:

9/21/09 8:53:27 PM configd[36]
Wake: Success - AC - EHCI
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.powermanagement.wake
com.apple.message.signature: Success
com.apple.message.uuid: 9E24809B-244D-40AE-8549-5576CB323E22
com.apple.message.result: Success​

However, before every "shutdown on wake" the message under the DIAGNOSTIC INFORMATION > Diagnostic Messages looks like this:

9/22/09 8:37:36 AM configd[15]
Sleep: Platform Failure - AC
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.powermanagement.sleep
com.apple.message.signature: Platform Failure
com.apple.message.result: Failure
com.apple.message.uuid: 9EAD745C-AA36-4738-823E-3EA423D638AF​

And I have one that reads...

10/9/09 8:43:24 AM configd[15]
Sleep: Early Failure - AC
com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.powermanagement.sleep
com.apple.message.signature: Early Failure
com.apple.message.result: Failure
com.apple.message.uuid: E728678E-C2CD-4EF1-B18B-9536278106ED​

I submitted these seemingly important logs (about 12 or so) to the apple care specialist via a capture tool who in turn ran them by some apple engineers. I heard back from him today and apparently they aren't enough to pin-point the issue. So back we go to more random tests.


Next Steps:

As you might imagine, I am getting really frustrated at this point. The warranty on my machine ran out on October 10th, but luckily I reported this issue prior to that so any repairs that are needed will be covered. Still, I feel as if I am getting the run around and it's been almost a month now since the problem began.

I know intermittent issues are tough to diagnose, but the fact that I have a dozen logs all saying something about a platform failure seems to indicate, at the very least, that something is wrong. Nonetheless, I am being told to jump through more and more hoops with no end in sight.

The bottom line is, if you were me, what would you do? You have a computer that is hard to work on for fear of loosing data due to a shutdown if it sleeps, but Apple is taking ages to accept the machine for any sort of repair. I also fear that if they do finally take the machine is, they won't be able to properly fix it, or will claim nothing is wrong.

Any ideas?

 

Snow Leopard was installed as an upgrade. In other words, I had Leopard on the machine and then installed Snow Leopard on top of that.

I have since reinstalled SL, again as an upgrade.

System Profiler has 2 diagnostic messages.

- 1 Apple Hardware Test = Passed

- 1 Power On Self-Test = Passed

I ran the hardware test another time prior to the reinstall of SL and it also passed, but that record is no longer in the logs.


I'm curious why you suspect a software issue. The fact that the problem persisted through a reinstall of SL seems to suggest hardware.

Granted, it wasn't an erase and install, so it could still be a software issue, but I really want to avoid erasing and installing as it takes ages to reinstall everything. (The better part of a day and even then everything isn't the way you want it.) Not to mention the feeling you get when you have spent 6 hours reinstalling everything after a wipe and reinstall only to have the issue pop-up again is nothing short of infuriating.

 

Hah. I tend to think the same way. Which is probably why I am so reluctant to do a clean install... I have done so many in the past. Heck, I do them now and again even if everything is running fine.

Good point about the other HD. I may just wipe out my XP drive (I don't really use Boot Camp these days anyway) and use that to install OSX and check it that way.

Just out of curiosity, how does one do a clean install of SL? I take it the SL DVD contains the full thing, so I assume you can just use it to install the OS. I guess the only things you might miss are some of the "extra" pieces of software you get from the older disks, though now that I think about it, I don't think there are any programs I got for free from older disks that I use/don't already have elsewhere. (iLife, iWork, etc.)

Thanks for your help by the way.

 

Ah sorry, missed your post.

I agree with you. I do feel like I am having to do a lot of work here. After this batch of troubleshooting I think I will be straightforward and put my foot down. It's just a pain having to work with the issue since the tech support via the "specialist" is really slow.

We tend to play phone tag for a few days and when I do get an update, it's hardly a breakthrough. (For example, the real let down on the diagnostic messages not being "meaningful.")

 

Indeed.

I have 3 Hard Drives in my machine at the moment.

1) Primary OSX HD. (All my files, apps, etc.)

2) TM HD. (Backup of my documents and a few things I don't want to loose.)

3) Windows XP HD.


I wiped the 3rd HD and will install SL on it tomorrow. I won't bother reinstalling all my stuff onto it, but rather use it as a "test" HD for the shutdown issue.

 

Just a quick update while I wait for a callback from the Apple Care Specialist.

Last night and this morning I performed a few additional tests and troubleshooting steps. (I updated the first post to reflect this, but figured I'd add it here as well.)

- Ran Apple Hardware Test (x10) = All Passed
- Installed SL on a clean HD
- Ran the Machine with various RAM configurations

So basically, the hardware test came up clean and even with a fresh install on an erased drive, the issue persisted. As for the RAM configurations, I didn't go all out, but simply removed all but 2 sticks, had the issue occur, and then swapped the first two sticks out for another set and had the issue occur again. Not completely rigorous, but with a 10x AHT loop coming up as "pass" as well, I think the ram is probably fine.


I am waiting on a call from Apple at the moment. Hopefully they will finally allow my machine to get fixed now that I have completed the trouble shooting Olympics.

 

Hey Bartman. I have indeed tried running the machine off the UPS and it still shutdown on me. At this point, it seems likely the surge may have damaged some internal components.

I agree. I ran the extended test 10 times and nothing came up. However, it's my understanding that intermittent power supply issues can be difficult for diagnostic tests to detect since there isn't a lot of circuitry to check.

To answer your question about the erase and install, yes. The HD had been wiped clean (zeroed out data) and SL was installed from the DVD with no migration of any data.


So, after speaking with an Apple Care agent (again) he finally agreed it was time to bring the machine into a store. I was worried I wouldn't be able to recreate the problem for them and that they would deny service for that reason, but the agent I spoke with said that given the number of steps I had taken at that point, they would check it in regardless and at least run some tests.

Luckily, when I took it in and set it up, I was able to get it to do the shutdown thing both when booted from my HD and from the network boot. Needless to say with the case notes to back me up, there was more than enough reason to check the machine in and order both a power supply and Logic Board just in case.

I will get the computer back Monday or Tuesday and we'll see how things go. Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. I'll be sure to post a follow up and list what was replaced and if it solved the problem.

 

Final Update

I got my computer back from the Apple Store about a week ago and so far everything has been running smoothly. In the end, they replaced the power supply. So far, this seems to have done the trick.

Unless something starts to go wrong, I am pretty sure the problem has been solved.