rambo1906
Level 1
(0 points)
Q: Safe Sleep issue...
Over the last 2 weeks I have been experiencing some strange behavior from my macbook. For starters, I have a mid 2012 macbook pro, 15", 2.3 GHz processor. There is a pretty lengthy story to this, but please read this cause I literally have run out of ideas as to what is causing my problems.
About 2 weeks ago I woke up and opened my macbook and a strange screen popped up (I was later told by a genius person that this screen is was safe sleep for when the battery dies however I leave my computer charging over night so the battery is always at 100%). Over the next few mornings the same exact thing occurred. I would open my macbook and it would boot into safe sleep for about 30 secs and then everything returned to normal. This even occurred during the day after I had left it asleep for about 4 hours. After about 3 days of this, I took it to the apple store where they did some user level testing and told me there were some problems with the permissions and that fixing those should do the trick (No other software or hardware problems noted). I took my macbook home thinking everything was fixed but the next morning the exact same thing occurred. I took it back the next day and agreed to have it shipped off for further testing. After about 5 days my macbook was returned to me and I was told that the harddrive and logic board had been replaced and that everything should be fine. Of course, the next morning I had the exact same issue. I once again took it up to the apple store and agreed to leave it over night for them to wipe my computer clean and check the hardware and software. I returned 2 days later and all of it checked out. According to the genius person, the theory was that possibly my problems were due to using time machine but I have never once used it so that could not be the problem. At this point, the hardware and software did not seem to be the problem so to rule out the possibility that something I was doing was causing the problem (an application or a file that I had) I told the person that I would take my computer home, set it up but then immediately let it sleep to see if I was still having problems. 8 hours later I opened my computer and again it was still booting into safe sleep mode despite not adding any files or applications. I went back to the apple store and talked to the manager about my issues and he agreed to give me a brand new macbook to replace the one I was having problems with.
I figured that now that I had a brand new computer that my problems were gone but when I woke up the next morning it booted up into safe sleep. At this point I realized that the only thing that had not changed throughout this ordeal was that I had been using the same charger (I was not given a new charger with my new mackbook. Also, I had used 2 different outlets throughout this ordeal with the same result). The next day I went back to the apple store and I explained my theory about the charger possibly being the issue and they gave me a brand new charger. However, the next morning I had the same exact problem. This was on saturday and since then I have done some more testing to try to isolate the problem. The next morning (Sunday) instead of opening my laptop I just unplugged it and it booted into safe sleep. That night I decided to just leave my macbook unplugged over night to see what would happen. When I opened it up this morning it booted normally.
So...it would seem that it has something to do with having it on charge for an extended period of time (around 4 hours) but I have had this computer for 4 months and had never had this problem until 2 weeks ago. I still feel like it has something to do with the charger but I have now used two different chargers on two different computers and have had the same problem. Does anyone have any idea what is causing this? If so, please tell me how to fix it.
MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)
SwankPeRFection
Level 4
(1,435 points)
The update came out at the tail end of November, got pulled by Apple due to a bug with the Keychain it introduced within 3 days and got rereleased a couple of weeks later. The original release date on Apple's site for it was never changed (they masked the fact that they botched the first release of it). Any MBP that has this update applied will have this issue. I personally noticed it the week after I installed it. I was out of town that weekend and the update came out on a Friday and I installed it. I didn't pay too much attention to it over that weekend because I was busy. When I got back into town, I noticed the behavior change immediately. I have spent the better part of 4 months with AppleCare support and executive relations trying to get them to fix this behavior issue, but not all of it. The hibernation portion is actually not a bad thing because it does save you a lot of battery power over time, but that capability is defeated due to the issue with the AC charger connect/disconnect causing it to wake up all the time or come out of this lower power state hibernation. If unplugging it from power wakes it up, what good was entering the hibernation state in the first place? I'm trying to get them to fix the issue where the system doesn't seem to follow the ACWAKE 0 setting when either standby or autopoweroff is turned on. If they can fix that, then we'd all be happy. Disabling autopoweroff is an easy change the user can make if they wanted to via PMSET, but this other issue cannot be fixed with a settings change, it must be fixed in the PM logic in OSX.
As for why you just noticed it now... all I can say is that it took Apple 2 months to come out and realize what I was talking about and then say that it was an intentional change due to Euro energy efficiency power standards. There are a few threads on here that describe this issue. Search for the ones that have my posts in them and you can read all about it. Some people noticed it right away and some haven't. The people with Retina MBPs or Air models (i.e. the Macs with flash storage) may not noticed it as readily because the SSD hard drive in them are faster, so the hibernation wakeup screen isn't as predominant for them. It flashes up and then it's gone due to the speed of the SSD drives. For traditional drive models, this hibernation wake takes a little longer and people tend to notice that. The other thing is, not everyone is as keen on noticing small behavioral differences with their systems. I notice these things and that's why I picked up on it almost immediately, I would have done it even earlier had I not been focused on other things the weekend of the patch install.
Anyway, if it bothers you that much, I urge you to call AppleCare and report your issue and complain about it. If they get enough calls about it, they'll fix it. Don't be surprised if you get someone first who doesn't know what it's all about... after all, no one at your store knew about it and basically cracked open your MBP to replace perfectly good hardware in it for no good reason. Apple techs/engineers aren't the smartest in the world... at least they aren't ones that pay close attention to details, that's for sure.
