Dual Quad-core Mac Pro reboots from sleep

So I just called AppleCare phone support. When I described the problem they immediately transferred me to a product specialist. "Steve" told me that Apple is aware of the problem and is working it. While he couldn't tell me when it would be fixed, he suggested my best option was to disable sleep for now, and call back in a few weeks (or watch the forums, software updates, etc. for a solution).

It seems fair enough as otherwise the machine is quite amazing. So it appears the best strategy is to give them a little time to sort it out.

This is the first I've heard of them actually acknowledging the problem. I take that as a good sign.

Ok, keeping my fingers crossed......

I will pick up my mac pro from yhe Apple centre asap. looks like there is little they can do about it either. On the positive side they gave me a replacement mac for free to help me finish some work this weekend.

Are you, or others with this problem, running Parallels Desktop by any chance?

I had zero reboots all week, and so I cloned my OS onto three partitions and have been booting from each for further testing. One clone left clean; one clone installed Parallels; third clone installed Fusion 30 day demo.

The system with Parallels is exhibiting the reboot on wake issue, even as the clean system had no problems for the past 5 days. Anecdotal so far: if after a reboot, I do NOT start Parallels, then the machine sleeps and wakes. If Parallels is run since a prior reboot - and closed - then it seems I have the rebooot on wake issue. Current build of Parallels 3.0 (5284 if I recall - am on another computer while the test computer goes to sleep).

Beginning to think this is a software issue...

Testing continues...

Karl

HerrDrKarl wrote:
Are you, or others with this problem, running Parallels Desktop by any chance?

I'm not, but someone here recently suspected an Aperture launch, and I coincidentally have been reboot free for several days while not launching... Dashboard. I know, it's silly, and most likely coincidental as the issue has been characterized as random from the beginning. And this whole ram seating tangent of late, I feel is also an exercise in futility. Come to think of it, I've never had a reboot while drinking anything other than... coffee! Hmmm

Hi folks. I just wanted to add my name to the list... Another new Mac Pro user with the PIA reboot issue. So far I've done the archive and install (so that I'm back at 10.5.1), zapped the PRAM, done the SMC reset, and deleted some cache file.. Only the PRAM zap really seems to make any difference, but it's only temporary... After a day of use, the machine wants to reboot. I hope Apple gets this resolved soon! Other than the reboot and some funky screen redraws, I'm really liking this machine.
BTW- mine's the standard 2.8 dual, with upgrades of Airport and the Nvidia 8800 card. Still 2 gigs RAM.

Neal Jackson wrote:
My replacement is due for delivery any time now and if it misbehaves it will be sent packing.

Neal, we're curious how your replacement has fared?

I don't know if this is important or not, but my computer has been waking and performing as it should for the past few days. I called Apple on Wed and was told that they are aware of the problem. The technician advised me to uncheck "Put hard disks to sleep whenever possible" and to "not select" the drive I wanted to use to start up my system. In other words, don't highlight it. He also had me to the PRAM reset. I don't know which of those suggestions by the technician made any difference, but I had done the PRAM reset before, and the problem came back, but I had not tried the other two things.

Sandylp wrote:
The technician advised me to uncheck "Put hard disks to sleep whenever possible" and to "not select" > the drive I wanted to use to start up my system. In other words, don't highlight it.

Can you elaborate on this? "Put hard disks to sleep..." has always been unchecked for me, and PRAM resets don't work for long, so I'd like to try the third suggestion. I can't work out what you mean, though.

HerrDrKarl wrote:
Are you, or others with this problem, running Parallels Desktop by any chance?

Anecdotal so far: if after a reboot, I do NOT start Parallels, then the machine sleeps and wakes. If Parallels is run since a prior reboot - and closed - then it seems I have the rebooot on wake issue. Current build of Parallels 3.0 (5284 if I recall - am on another computer while the test computer goes to sleep).

It is build 5584 of Parallels Desktop 3.0 (current build) and I'm feeling 99% sure there is a software conflict / issue causing the reboot issue for me now.

I've gone through 6 sleep / wake cycles with 100% consistent behavior:

1. If I do not run Parallels since a prior reboot, then the machine wakes from sleep properly

2. If I do run Parallels - don't have to do anything in the VM, just get Windows XP desktop and then shutdown and quite Parallels - then the machine reboots when woken from sleep

Each of the 6 trials above was done with auto-sleep and the sleep period set to 8 minutes so I didn't have to wait all day for results.

My earlier reported problems were on the delivered system with Parallels installed. All of my 'experiments' with pulling memory in and out and testing it were done on a reinstalled (archive and install) OS 10.5.2 and did not exhibit the reboot problem.

If it were not for the fact that others here are not running Parallels, and that the behavior was observed also with Aperture, I would put the blame on Parallels. _What it appears to be, then, is an Apple software bug_ that is exposed by Parallels in my case, Aperture in others, and still mysterious causes by yet others.

I'm rebooting to my 'clean' system partition now, to verify that all is still stable and not re-booting there (indicating that the Parallels version of my system did not screw up SMC, PRAM or something else). Then, I'll go back to testing my Fusion partition...and at some point file bug reports with Apple and Parallels.

BTW: In the Fusion 1.1.1 release notes, they mention that they have disabled unbuffered disk I/O in their product until Apple fixes Apple bug 5679432 which can cause machine hangs (no mention of reboot from sleep). Perhaps Parallels and Aperture are doing unbuffered I/O...and then the problem really is back on Apple's shoulders. (Of course the Aperture team should know what the OS X team is doing, but you know how communication in larger organizations works....)

Cheers,
Karl

It's been stuck at a TNT depot in Cork, Ireland, these past few days. Hopefully I'll have it Tuesday latest.

Incidentally four MacPro purchasers I know of have all now had the reboot problem. Not all immediately. Seems it can kick in a week or two after first booting.

Maybe Apple has a near 100% failure rate on their hands.

Message was edited by: Neal Jackson

s w_i_t_t_e_rs wrote:

Sandylp wrote:
The technician advised me to uncheck "Put hard disks to sleep whenever possible" and to "not select" > the drive I wanted to use to start up my system. In other words, don't highlight it.

Can you elaborate on this? "Put hard disks to sleep..." has always been unchecked for me, and PRAM resets don't work for long, so I'd like to try the third suggestion. I can't work out what you mean, though.

The technician said that in System Preferences / Startup Disk - there is a list of the harddrives on my computer. I usually highlight the one that I want to boot from. He said not to highlight the drive. I usually startup from the drive in Bay 1 and use the second harddrive for Time Machine and they are listed in that order, but I haven't selected or highlighted any particular drive for startup. The technician may have elaborated as to why this might help, but I can't remember exactly what it was now.

When I go to System Preferences and Startup Disk the current startup disk is automatically highlighted. The only way to unhightlight it is to select Network startup. Could this be what he is referring to?

My Mac Pro 3.2ghz had been working just fine until about 10 days ago. I though the problem was software so after messing with utilities... the problem would go away for a day or so...very frustrating. Finally thought to google the problem. Glad to see I'm not the only one. Better yet to read that Apple is "working on it" -- I've turned off disk sleep...see if that helps.

This is the longest period I've EVER gone with an unresolved problem on my Mac. Frustrating, but at least I'm not losing data....that I know of....

Yes, there does not seem to be a way to "unhighlight" the start-up disk.

However, I remember an earlier thread in this post where a user said he was able to "solve" the reboot from sleep problem by doing the following (which sounds similar to what the Apple tech suggested):

1. Open System Preferences and go to Startup Disk.
2. Select a drive other than your normal boot drive.
3. Close System Preferences.
4. Open System Preferences again and go back to Startup Disk.
5. Select your normal boot drive.

Seems totally bizarre that this would do anything, but he claimed it worked. I recall trying it and I think it worked for me - for a while.

All of this is probably barking at the moon until Apple figures it out. For now I'm using the Deep Sleep widget and it's great. In fact, I may continue using it at night even if/when they fix the sleep problem. Saves a lot of power.