MacBook Pro Sleep/Wake from sleep problem

I've been having a similar problem for about 2 weeks now on and off. I'm not a computer person really so I'll try my best to explain. When I close my Macbook pro at night a few minutes later the apple will light up and it will wake itself up. Then if I go to open it the screen stays black and the only way to go around this is to hold the power button down and restart. My brother has already had me reset the PRAM/NVRAM and the SMC with no luck. Does anyone have any ideas?

I just wanted to add that mine is having a similar problem. But my MBP is not waking itself while closed. It's just after I close the lid sometimes, then reopen it a few minutes later, the screen does not illuminate. It makes all of the sounds of being awake, except that I can't see anything. I even get "plunk" sounds when I randomly click or type. So at least in my case, the computer is not truly asleep, it only appears to be. This seems to occur almost randomly, or at least I have yet to notice what I'm doing before each occurrence.

Have you installed this firmware update, which was released one week ago, on your MacBook Pro?
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macbookproefifirmwareupdate15.html

so I called applecare today and after doing both steps that I had done earlier they told me that this could be a hardware issue and that it will need to go to either an apple store or sent into the repair center so as to fix it...just so everyone knows

you may want to try the steps I outlined at the end of
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1478474
let me know if it worked

Message was edited by: clemson47

I have been having this problem for about 4 months now and it is getting worse. I lost 3.5 hours of work last Sunday because of this issue which as you can imagine was very frustrating. I took it to a Mac Genius 2 times in San Francisco - these guys were great and tried a few things (disable safe sleep, reset pram, etc) but since we couldn't reproduce the issue, there wasn't a whole lot more they could do. I had the issue happen again even out of safe sleep (they tried to say it was 3rd party ram but since safe sleep was disabled, it removed that theory), brought it in and they wrote up a ticket for me. I live in San Diego so I am going to bring it in down here.

Since then, I found a work-around that is woking for now. When this happens, I hook it up to an external monitor and my screen comes back to life. It works for me most of the time for now till I can get it into the Apple store for repair but I did get a fatal error (fortunately after saving 3 hours of audio editing) which forced reboot. I am just bummed because this is my 2nd Macbook Pro since August - I love the OS but the quality I am a bit frustrated with.

The 1.5 EFI Firmware update actually solved my wake from seep issue and not the SMC reset. Now it wakes from sleep like it did when I ran Tiger. I still have an issue where if I close the lid and carry the laptop it will keep waking when it's moved but I may need to have this issue serviced. The latch is secure and the lid does not pop open. Was like that out of the box when new. I usually shut the MacBook Pro down if I need to travel with it in a bag or backpack for extended period for now.

As a note: I also have a white MacBook 2GHz that has never had any wake from sleep issues.

You're among many who are new or old to Mac and VERY disappointed with such an incredibly annoying issue. I filed a bug with Apple support and after a few exchanges, was told to update my firmware with the EFI patch that was released on 4/8. Well, I downloaded it, and it wouldn't install; the installer said that my system didn't need the update, even though my firmware is OLDER than the one in that package. I replied to Apple in the open ticket and was met with complete and utter silence. I've posted a few more updates to the ticket on things that I think might trigger the problem, but still, nothing. Like you said, for all the reliability hype Apple claims and for such a widespread issue (just do a Google search on "MacBook wake from sleep to black screen"), you'd think they'd be on top of this one. I'm about ready to go find an old iBook, which is what I had. That thing was slow as **** but at least it was reliable.

Can anyone summarise the story so far as had similar experience running 10.4.11 on MBP.

Got it, I think...

My MacBook was waking with the lid closed. Did all the fixes including removing SafeSleep. Mine would wake with the lid closed when plugged in but not when under battery....

In the Energy Save pane, I had the computer and display set to sleep at the same time when using the power adapter. Under the battery, the display was set to sleep at about 3 minutes while the computer was set to sleep at about 15 minutes. So, I changed the setting under the power adapter to have the computer sleep well after the display. Voila...no more waking with the lid closed.

It seemed in my case that having those two settings the same was causing the problem. Why? Who knows?

I had the same display problems when I tried waking the macbook and even when booting ( I had to take the battery out so that the display worked again).

I have tried almost all of the suggestion in this thread and others, and non of them worked for me. The only way it finally fixed was turning in the macbook to an authorized apple technical support. They replaced the display and the sleep problems have not presented yet.
In sum, it seems this is definitely a hardware problem which can be fixed only by changing the component.

Do you think it could be related to another problem I - and colleagues - have experienced on MacBook Pros (running 10.4.x and 10.5.x so not latter's fault).

After coming out of sleep the internal display is not recognised. Luckily I have an external display attached and so I could see what had happened.

However, if the external display is only a coincidence and the problem occurred without one attached then I would have no display and it would appear to have crashed.

My Macbook Pro is often very slow to sleep when I close the lid, much slower than my old iBook .. the light stays on for ages, then finally, it sleeps!

Also, sometimes when opening the lid again, the screen does not come on for a bit, or does not respond to the brightness control if it was set all the way down when I closed the lid.

An Apple computer that is slow to go to sleep? Surely not.

Seems to have done it for me, too. So glad I can love this thing again.

Jim

Just adding my voice. I am having v. similar issues. It takes my MBP about 15 sec to go to sleep.
It also took too long to wake up or did not wake up unless i manually restarted.
I did download EFI Firmware 1.5 update and somewhat improved but as suggested by others in the discussion here I tried turning off bluetooth and airport before putting to sleep.
Now it wakes up quick every time!
I also had some problems with the external display but that seems to have improved with EFI Firmware 1.5 update.
My trackpad does some funny things every once in a while.. still unclear as to why.
Things have been a bit buggy right out of the box, not nearly as rock solid as my 12" PB g4 running Tiger.
I also downloaded a better color profile to make the display look better.
All in all not up to the Apple quality I had come to expect, but things are improving and I am confident Apple will get things right soon.