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

I, too, have been having the wake-sleep issues. However, until about 8 weeks ago I was running 10.6.8 and snow leopard. And the wake-sleep issues started long before then.

Just as with the person who believes it is power point, I will re-state that t"here are so many different experiences people have had with this-- and with fixes-- that it's all very strange."

I hope the steps you take resolve the matter for you.

You could see if the fix for screen freezes on page 28 of this thread is relevant:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2384136?start=405&tstart=0

It works on a 2008 iMac.

I have a 2011 21.5 iMac. So I've had this problem, off and on since January. Computer would go to sleep and not wake up. Typically would happen after it had been asleep for longer periods of time, like overnight. Sometimes the computer would "lock up" on me while I was using it.

I took it to the store and the Genius replicated the problem right away. He asked if they could keep the computer for the week and see if they could fix it. He didn't know if it was software or hardware related. I picked it up and another Genius gave me back my computer and said they were unable to replicate the issue and that as far as they were concerned it was fixed. I asked them what they did to it, and they said nothing.

I took it home and a month later it started doing it again. Same problem. This time I just called AppleCare and paid for the 3 year with unlimited phone support package. The guy had me erase my hard drive and reinstall the OS. It took all night but I did it. I then restrored all my data using Time Machine as soon as it came back up. Next day, even after all that work, it still had the same problem. So I reset my PRAM. And viola! Problem solved. Well at least solved for a couple weeks at a time.

Here is the issue, I'm not sure if Apple knows this or if they just don't want to acknowledge it. There is a file that is created/updated everytime you put your computer to sleep. This file stores data about the state of your machine so it knows what to go back to when the computer wakes. If this file becomes corrupted the computer cannot update this file and it can't wake up, because the program the computer needs to call on to wake up is no good. By resetting the PRAM it clears out this file.

What causes the corruption of the file you may be wondering. I'm fairly certain it's the result of files that have been migrated over from a Windows-based PC. The metadata from the files lingers when the files are brought over and causes serious issues for Mountain Lion. Files might include, Word docs, Excel files, photos. Basically the attached data showing where and how this data was stored on the old PC is screwing up Mountain Lion and it results in a corrupted sleep file. This corruption seems to only happen after I access one of these files. Funny how long it took me to connect the dots. The only long-term solutions to fixing this problem, is a complete erase of the hard drive and then to cleanly restore each program and file on the computer. An Apple tech support person can help you with that, but it does take a really, really long time. For me, I think I'll just keep resetting the PRAM every couple of weeks and then never buy an Apple computer again.

My issue wound up being a bad USB port, any time I have anything plugged into that bad port, anything.... it will go to sleep and not wake up. I just figured this out recently you may want to try unplugging everything from all ports and using only bluetooth keyboard and mouse for a while.

Shar 🙂

I have a 2011 21.5 iMac too and had the 'no wake up from sleep' problem a few times. On checking through Terminal (pmset -g) I picked up a warning that the disk sleep should not be off if system sleep is on. After I reset the energy saver to default settings I have had no more problems even though I have since turned off 'disk sleep when possible' and I don't get that warning now. I still have a startup problem though - it takes several minutes to get to the chime on most cold starts.

In my case it was a "bad" (more likely incompatible) powered USB hub. as soon as I plugged a different hub, the problems disappeared.

-avi

most often reason for iMac or it's screen not waking up from sleep is a hardware issue. You are very lucky if that is just bad usb hub or hdd, because for some it will be a faulty videocard or logic board.

If you encounter this problem and are able to return your mac to the store then do so immediately and ask for a new one.

I know that something is wrong with hardware, because sometimes I cannot wake up screen while running Mac OS or Windows 7 via bootcamp.

I would return mine if I could, unfortunately I can't.

In the future I will make sure that I get a mac without this problem, for the time being I try not to let screen sleep without whole system fall asleep. Because (in my case) if screen falls asleep and OS is still awake, I will have to force sleep (control+shift+eject) to be able to wake the screen up.

I did get a replacement from Apple, twice... first machine had other issues, the fan would come on full blast a few seconds after it was plugged in (but not powered on!). then once the computer was powered on, the fan would stop :-(

this first machine was replaced by a new iMac, which had the sleep issue, so Apple sent me a third machine, which had identical sleep issues (which only showed up after I configured it and plugged in the USB hub).

I got lucky as far as diagnosing the problem on my own (apple just wanted to send a fourth machine), since on the second replacement machine, I did not plug the USB hub till I was done configuring it, and had no sleep issue, the moment I plugged in the USB hub, the sleep issues started, so it was relatively easy to figure it out.

so far so good, the machine is now about 5 months old, and no more sleep issues :-)

-avi

My brand-new MacMini (OS 10.8) also did not wake up from sleep - or, to be more precise, it took anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes and hitting random keys on the keyboard to wake it up.

Somebody had suggested that removing their 7-port USB hub fixed the problem. Since I was using a 7-port USB 2.0 hub, I removed it. However, it did not make a difference. Frustrated, I re-connected the 7-port USB hub. But now, the problem is gone - my computer wakes from sleep in a split second (as it should), and I didn't even have to get rid of my USB hub.

I have no idea why the problem is gone, but it is gone!

I posted quite a while ago that this problem (iMac mid-2010 in a "coma" and wouldn't wake from sleep) seemed to be associated specifically with 10.6.8 for me, and that when I updated to 10.7.4 the problem went away:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2223188?answerId=18915536022#18915536022

One year later, and still in 10.7 (10.7.5), and I have not had the problem a single time, so that fixed it for my iMac.

My daughter's late 2011 MBP, however, started having problems waking up from sleep during her freshman year in college this past year. She came up with a work-around of plugging earbuds into the headphone jack and said that woke it up immediately, every time. When she arrived home for summer I could finally get my hands on the MBP and test it myself. Without forcing it to wake using headphones, it would wake on its own about 80% of the time, taking anywhere from 5 seconds to over 2 minutes; the other 20% of the time it would not wake on its own even given up to 4 minutes, but the headphone trick would wake it everytime. As it was (barely) still under warranty, I took it to see a genius and they diagnosed as most likely a failing "ribbon cable". The techs confirmed this and replaced the ribbon cable, and now it wakes immediately every time.

I use my Imac basically as a media server. It is an 27" I7 2.97 w/ 12 gb of ram 5750 video card. I use a Nitro AV fire wire 800 hub to feed 6 WD external drives to mu Imac. I also run an ARCAM-r DAC with a USB cable to the mac for sound.

Over the last two months I have been having issues with the mac. It is set up to reboot if there is a power failure. Predominately it will not wake up in the morning and I will have to hold in the power button to reboot. Sometimes, it will just crash during the night and will be off when I try to use it. During the day, I can abuse it without any issues at all. I can encode with handbrake, edit video, transfer large files from my pc's, and run spreadsheets with no issues at all, at the same time. The majotiry of the time it gets bitter is when I try to use it in the morning.

I have run:

Hardware diag ok

Check disc no prob

reinstalled mountain lion,

reset nvram / prram

ran it with 1 4gb stick of ram 3 times. same prob.

tried to run it without any peripherals

uninstalled all programs from after the issues began

ran norton anti virus for mac

ran clean my mac

ran cc cleaner for mac

The video monitor is set to sleep after 3 hours. I really do not want to keep it on 24/7 since the imac is on 24/7.

Any suggestions would be great!

It is most likely related to the monitor coming out of sleep, which I would assume is a logic board issue. Is there a way to test that?

Tonight, I will leave the monitor on all night and see what happens in the morning.

It did this to me again this morning on my 2010 iMac 27in. I did a hard shut down, rebooted - prompted me "there was a problem with the shutdown - report to Apple?)

Only the second time this has happened..however, call me a tad nervous. The first time was about 3 weeks ago - and a few days before my HDD (the flawed 1TB Seagate harddrive) completely failed. That was replaced under the Apple 1TB Seagate program for free 2 weeks ago today.

I cant understand the technical issues. I know "kernel panic" means something, at least it sounds serious.
Disk Utility did not find anything. 😕

I just purchased a top spec 27inch imac ( late 2012 build ) and it will not wake up from sleep. The only way I can get it to wake is pull the power lead at the rear for 15 seconds and plug it back in. Then the power button starts the computer.

This problem happened straight out of the box, I have a feeling the computer is headed back to the apple store as I see from this forum this is a pretty big and long established problem.

In my case, Apple sent three replacements, all had the exact same issue.

I ended up diagnosing the problem (at least the one which was affecting my situation, as it seems that there might be several causes for this issue) to a USB hub which somehow managed to change the power saving and/or sleep settings...

once I plugged in a different USB hub, the issue went away, and I canceled the fourth replacement :-)

this is from a post I posted about five months ago:

I used the system pref -> energy saver and clicked restore defaults which restored the hibernatemode to 0.

HOWVER, upon plugging in a powered USB hub, the hibernate mode was automagically reset to 5.

once at hibernate mode 5, putting the machine to sleep manually exhibited the same symptoms, i.e. not wake from sleep and disabled power button.

this was done with an apple care tech on the phone, and he recommended replacing the iMac once again, and sending me a fourth replacement!

overnight I played some more with this

I reset the hibernate mode but this time to 3 and I tried a different USB hub.

hibernate mode stayed at 3 after plugging in the USB hub.

I then created a small shell script to monitor and display the hibernate mode:

function showhibernate() {

while true

do echo -n `date` " ";pmset -g|grep hibernatemode;sleep 10

done

}

and executed it overnight

this evening after I came home from work, I noticed that the hibernate mode somehow was switched from 3 to 7!?

unfortunately, I did not have the echo `date` on the first version, so I do not know when it was switched from 3 to 7.

however, the machine did wake up from sleep... (so it seems that 7 is not as bad as 5?)

I am guessing that some powered USB hubs cause unexpected changes to the hibernatemode, which in turn cause the SMC to crash, disabling the power button.

-avi

Went to the original 8GB ram that it came with.

Seems to work ok all night. Does not lose connection from library.

Problem hapopens when I try to use the work station. It wakes, starts to flicker, then goes black screen. Nothing changes this. I hold the power button, wait for it to poer down, then press for restart. It restarts and I can use it all day with no issues. I really push it too. Only wnen the monitor sleeps the issue occurs.