iMac won't wake up from sleep using keyboard or mouse

The sleep problem was a display issue like yellow tinge.. i've tried everything and replaced all (4 display and all with problems, ram, hdd, mainboard and processor), now Apple will send me a new imac. I hope that this will be perfect!

Apple please change display panel brand (LG) it's ridicoulous, i've spent a lot of money.. i've buyed a dell 22" monitor same years ago for 200€ and it was great, the LG panels on imac cost 600€ and is like a 100€ display!

The initiate sleep and then wake it instead of a reboot trick never worked for me, Qholmes. I suspect there are at LEAST two to three variants on the issue here that we're all lumping together but probably have vastly different causes and solutions (number of bluetooth or usb devices attached, bad logic board, display issues, etc.) It's maddening!

In fact, I'm convinced that I myself have experienced two variants just over the last couple days:

version 1:

Fans and drive noise kick in, but monitor won't turn on. Light on attached Wacom tablet off and does not turn on with input. Only choice is to reboot by holding power button down and pressing again. Reboot works with no issue.

version 2:

No reaction from computer as far as fan or disk noise. Computer sleeps even when preferences set to NEVER SLEEP. Light remains on on Wacom tablet. Attempted reboot always results in kernel panic.

For now, I'm really concerned with (2). (1) I think I can learn to live with provided I can prevent the computer from sleeping at all.

Now did you try putting it to sleep and waiting like i said? for 10 sec... if i dont wait then it makes it worse and might need a reboot. It drives me crazy as i have a PC beside my Mac and i work on both at the same time switching back and forth and when i have to wait 30 sec to sort out the display it just ticks me off.. over and over all day. I did finally just set it to a long period of time before anything shuts off but then i think about the extra electricity i am using.. Not a huge deal but i do try to reduce my usage when i can.. and i am sure it is reducing the life of the screen as well..

Q

Yes 2 would bother me too... i was a bit worried the few times i rebooted and i had no display..

Q

I don't know if I waited a full 10 seconds or not. One of the more frustrating things about this problem is that it takes so **** long to troubleshoot. I need at least 4 hours to let the machine go into weird sleep before I can test anything...

Really... i can reproduce it pretty quick. I just set the sleep and display time to something small like 1 and 2 min and i can make it do it.. Maybe not the first time but pretty quick.

Q

I can wake mine from short sleeps, but longer ones (overnight or at least 4 hours in my experience) are what causes the issue. This makes me think that you and I are likely dealing with different issues...

Yes it could very well be different.

Q

Well, I'm sad to report that the computer shut down/went to sleep/went into mysterious coma mode yet again, so I guess it wasn't the Wacom tablet after all. To make matters worse, I get kernel panic errors quite often on reboot - sometimes instantly, sometimes after a little while. When I examine the log, it looks like the cause is different every time (Finder, GeekTools, etc.). That fact, along with the fact that I'm working from a clean install less than 24 hours old leads me to believe there is some sort of hardware issue here, perhaps with the logic board or something...

Headed to the Genius Bar this evening. Hoping for the best!

Update: I just bought my 21.5 " IMac back around the first of July 2011 with Snow Leopard installed. When Lion came out I immediately installed it and that's when this issue came up. It just would not wake up 1st thing in the morning. So had to use the power button to turn it off and back on. I happen across this thread and tried a couple of things.

1. Went into Systems Preferences> Network> and deleted the WiFi and then added the WiFi back in.

2. Went into the Disk Utility and ran Fix Permissions

3. Installed the 10.7.1 update.

I don't know which fixed the issue, but, I haven't had reoccurrence of this issue since.

Hope it helps

I've had this problem all along since early 2010, but I think it's more serious than just updating drivers:

I have a 27" iMac and my wife has a 21" iMac. This happens to both of us.

We both use wireless keyboard, wireless mouse and trackpad. When this problem occurs, none of the devices can wakeup the iMac. I have to push the power button to see the screen and even then, none of the devices can sync up with the iMac. This only happens when the iMac is put to sleep (Cmd, Option, Eject) for a long time, such as overnight.

So I attached a wired USB mouse at that state to see if the system was responsive. The time was correct, so it wasn't really locked up. The USB mouse got my cursor back, yet when I tried to open the Bluetooth connection, but it was just hanging. I decided to "Restart" the Mac. The screen went white and the Spinning Wheel (not the spinning beach ball) displayed. The system simply would not shut down, unless if I held the power down and rebooted the Mac.

This tells me a few things. 1) For any Bluetooth or wireless device to be able to turn on the Mac and bring it out of sleep, the radio for the device needs to be on and in constant communication with the devices, even if the system is in sleep. 2) The nature of Bluetooth is that it created a network connection to each device which is different than WiFi. That's why you can only use one wireless phone with a bluetooth headset, even though if you pair multiple phones with it.

So since the "network" connection is disconnected from all available Bluetooth devices, this tells me that the radio inside the iMac is turning off and can't see the devices (that's why neither of them can bring it out of sleep), and when the power is restored by pushing the button, it simply does not come back up again (locks up) because the driver is still running and it thinks the radio is still on, but the chipset is shut down. A reboot resets the registers in the radio and reconnects the devices based on their MAC address.

This is either a flaw in the chipset, an issue with the driver or a combination. My guess goes toward the chipset issue which unfortunately is difficult or impossible to fix without changing the radio module. These type of chips unfortunately are not programmable and they simply need to be replaced. I'll do more testing by trying to kill different process while I have the terminal window open next time.

I, too, have had this problem with a brand new iMac 27". I've got a slightly different approach that I take when this happens, FWIW.

This only occurs after leaving the machine for a day without use -- so I'm not sure if this is a "deep" sleep issue only or what. The same problem as others see -- no wake from keyboard or mouse, but I can wake up with power button press.

I connect via VNC / Screen Sharing and run Bluetooth Explorer. I open Utiltiies->HCI Controller Selector (Cmd-K), and it shows that the "Apple BRCM ..." host controller is not active. I click activate and type in the admin password, then the devices wake up and the OS indicates that the Keyboard, Mouse and Trackpad are connected.

Seems to indicate an issue reactivating the host controller after coming out of a "deep" sleep.

I have been trying to pay more attention to my issue of late.. and i have been using it a lot as well... My computer can just fall asleep or attempt if the case may be for just a few minutes and it will not wake up. It does a bit better with the keyboard but less success with the usb mouse. My external monitor works fine though.

Q