Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Why did the power light on my mac mini stop pulsing?

anthonymoody

anthonymoody

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Aug 8, 2002
3,194
1,322
I'm a switcher so sorry if this is a dumb question, but when I first got my mini the blue LED power light would pulse slowly when the computer was asleep. Now it stays lit, even when the mini is asleep.

Did I change a pref or something?

Thanks,
Tony
 
Are you sure your monitor is sleeping. There's a difference. When the light pulses that means the entire system is asleep. When it is solid that means just the monitor is asleep. Its hard to tell with the minis because they're so quiet.
 
Hmm. Well maybe I was assuming (uh oh!) that the mini was sleeping too. The monitor is definitely sleeping (it goes black). But in Prefs I have the power saving thing set to put the computer to sleep after only 15 minutes of inactivity, but after much longer than that the screen is black but the blue led on the mini is solid. Strange.

TM
 
OK check - that worked. Choosing SLEEP from the apple menu puts the mini to sleep and the light pulses. Also, as an experiment I made the monitor sleep time shorter than the computer sleep time (they were simultaneous before) but no joy - the monitor went to sleep after 10 minutes but the mini appears have stayed awake :(

Not sure what to make of it.

TM
 
maybe you are running some program that is keeping it awake? On my powerbook if I have azureus running, the display etc will go to sleep but the computer will stay awake no matter the sleep settings. If you close all the running programs in your dock (right click if you got it, otherwise hold down the button on them and choose quit) does it still remain awake?
 
Almost certainly something is keeping it awake--a Mac won't sleep if it's doing something (and that's a good thing--imagine how annoying it'd be if your computer nodded off in the middle of a long download).

The most common "culprit" is leaving Mail.app open and set to check for mail every X minutes--that activity registers, and so resets the Mac's "sleep timer", so it'll never sleep.

I've also seen situations where leaving dialup internet connected can have the same effect, as can programs that run constantly in the background like Azureus (which, again, is the expected behavior).
 
Well, I leave Mail open all the time, and it checks for mail quite frequently, but my Mac mini still goes to sleep when it's supposed to. When I wake it up (at least it's not crabby when it wakes up! ;) ) it logs back in and checks for new mail.
 
Could also be...

an attached USB or Firewire device. This is a known issue to keep Macs from falling asleep... (sometimes)....
 
BINGO. You guys were right - a program was keeping it awake, though it wasn't what I expected and it was a little hard to track down. I figured weatherdock or some other persistent connection thing was going on. Turns out it was Entourage. I had reduced the schedule for checking all my accounts to every 1 minute (I'm crazy I know - I like my PC to feel like my blackberry:))

Anyway, backing it off to every 3 minutes did the trick. I may play with 2 minutes to see what happens ;)

Thanks again for all your help.

-Tony
 
Using Entourage. . . yuck!!! You are a new switcher!!! . . . teasing aside, i do think you should give Mail a try. it does everything entourage does, including the ability to connect to an exchange server. mail runs better with OS X and, in my opinion looks better than Entourage.
 
Does Mail allow you to get hotmail? I know that's a PITA requirement but there it is. I use Entourage b/c it easily sets up hotmail alongside my POP accounts and I can drag (actually copy) messages from hotmail into my POP email file folders.

TM
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back