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:
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...
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?
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
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
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?