Macbook waking up but no login screen

So a while back I had a certain little problem. I was watching a video online, the battery was pretty low and I just put it to sleep for a bit. Later on I tried to wake it up but the login box wouldn't come up. Since I didn't have my power adapter with me at work I just let the battery die. Once I go home, I plugged it in and turned it on, hoping the login box would pop up. Nothing. It was blank. I kind of got fed up and just took out the battery and put it back in and it worked. So my question is, if this were to happen in the future again, what should I do?

Aluminum Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jun 11, 2009 9:56 AM

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4 replies

Jun 11, 2009 10:45 AM in response to marking_nat

This is normal. It's likely it went into "safe sleep" mode, which is not normal sleep that will awaken with a lift of the lid or a tap of the spacebar. The screen goes black and the sleep-indicator LED turns off, rather than pulses.

You have to press the power button once it's plugged into the power source, and it will re-awaken in exactly the state it was in when it when it entered safe sleep.

Jun 11, 2009 12:18 PM in response to Jay Bullock

No, I understand it's in the sleep mode. But the thing was when I lifted the lid up and pressed any key I couldn't get the login box. I used the trackpad, did the 4 finger swipe and nothing. It was just a black screen. It glowed, it was clearly on, but I didn't get the login box. And once I started charging, pressed the power button the same thing occurred. It was blank, no login box. After I completely took out the power supply, I had got to restart it.

Jun 11, 2009 1:10 PM in response to marking_nat

There is an active program called loginwindow that sometimes becomes confused. You can force quit loginwindow and you will then be presented with the login screen. The best way to perform this would be to save your work and quit all running applications, goto Activity Monitor, locate and Force Quit loginwindow by hitting the Quit Process button in the menu area (looks like a stop sign) and then Force Quit from the pop up window. You will then be presented with your login screen because loginwindow will automatically restart much the same as Finder does.

This should do the trick but if it doesn't, you have not harmed your computer.

-GDF

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Macbook waking up but no login screen

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