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

John Christiansen wrote:
Hi mattd313,

What do you mean by not wakening: Does the computer go to the login window or it is before?
Have you tried to investigate the messages in the Console?

I walk up to the computer, press the space bar- nothing happens. I try everything to wake it up, and nothing happens. The USB external drive doesn't light up, the screen doesn't come one, it doesn't make any noises. It's as if it were turned off.
At this point I have to hold the power button for about 5-10 seconds. Then press it again to turn if on.

I don't know what I'd look for in the console- but if you tell me I'll look.

spawnster wrote:
Thanks John, so far I have not experienced the issue again since the change. Not sure if this works for everyone but just thought I'd share.

Good luck!

Well, I spoke too soon now.

It happened again this morning. The only change was I plugged in another device on the power strip where both my external hard disks are plugged into as well. I tried putting the display to sleep a couple of times and it happens every time.

These hard disks are plugged into a powered USB hub which is not plugged into the same strip.

I tried plugging the disks into the iMac directly and the USB hub separate. So far this is working but not sure for how long.

Hi mattd313,

The console keeps logs of all kind of different activities on the computer divided into sections, so tit requires a little effort figure out where to look (See the last link below). And then the next step is to identify the date and time when you had a issue, and then try to look for the messages around that time. E.g. at one point of time I found that an application was constantly trying to connect to something (several times each second) that did not exist anymore. So I could remove that old application. And for my wake up issue on my iMac here, I found that the computer at the time for login was trying to contact/check (or whatever it tried to) the Keychain, but did not succeed in doing so. After replacing the corrupt keychain with an older copy from the TimeMachine, it has worked fine for more than one week now I guess.

But I have to warn you about the console messages, you should allocate some time to sit down and read about it and then identify the error messages related to your incident (date/time) and try to understand what it says - I'm not a UNIX geek but most of them are not that hard to understand at some level - once you found them.

Links to articles on the Console:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1629.html

More helpful:
http://www.devdaily.com/mac-os-x/mac-osx-debug-tip-mac-log-files-logs-console-ap plication

Message was edited by: John Christiansen

Hi, also found this that explain a little about what is in the different logs. I would start with looking into the Console Messages and the system.log.

http://guides.macrumors.com/Console
The Console can display a number of different log files, each listed in the Log List.

-console.log - Information outputted by applications, usually errors of some kind.
-system.log - Information about system events, such as sleep and wake events.
~/Library/Logs - Various logs related to the current user. The most useful of these is the CrashReporter logs, which contain information about application crashes. These logs can help to troubleshoot crashes, and, if sent to application developers, can help to fix these bugs.
- /Library/Logs - Various logs related to the system. Generally less useful than the other logs.
- /var/logs - Various low level logs. Also of little use in most circumstances.

Message was edited by: John Christiansen

spawnster wrote:

I tried plugging the disks into the iMac directly and the USB hub separate. So far this is working but not sure for how long.

No go. It happened again this morning. Although first thing overnight it was fine, only after working on it a short time, left it and came back and the display wasn't waking up from sleep again.

To troubleshoot, I unplugged everything leaving only the iMac connected to the wired ethernet. I set the display sleep to one minute, had it sleep for a short time and it would not wake up again. Putting the iMac to hard sleep using the power button and waking it up through the wireless mouse or keyboard will still do it though.

I reset the SMC just in case but I haven't called Apple yet. Just don't want to go through the hassle especially if there is still no known fix as of yet.

Have you tried doing what one poster suggested: Doing a CTRL-SHIFT-Eject and then a few seconds later pressing Return? Mine has not had the problem in a few days, but am going to give his suggestion a try if it happens again. Would be interested to see if it wakes up your iMac.

Jim

Yes, the CTRL-SHIFT-EJECT is much the same as the power button press in that it puts the Mac to real sleep not just the display. I wait a few seconds and I can still wake it up with a keyboard or mouse press.

Happening again even after the SMC reset unfortunately.

Actually, my bad, you were referring to the Display Sleep shortcut. Unfortunately this does nothing for me when the iMac goes into this state. I still have to do a full computer sleep before I can get the display back again.

In the dim hope that it is a power issue, I have plugged in the iMac straight into the power socket without the power strip and all the other peripherals. Will see in a bit if this helps any.

Update - no it doesn't...

Message was edited by: spawnster

Well,

I've contacted Apple and we ran the usual procedures like resetting the pram & nvram. I already did this a few times so nothing new here. The apple guy told me that external harddrives cause a lot of problems, so i had to put my computer to sleep without the external drive connected. No solution. The last thing to make sure this isn't a hardware related problem was a OSX reinstall. So I backed everything up and did a complete clean install.

And guess what! Problem is still there. Is definitely think this (in my case) is a issue with the led backlight of the screen because i hear the imac coming to life and can see the display (from really close, with a spotlight.. it hardly noticeable, but it's there..

Anyway, i'm bringing the iMac back to the store next week.. see if they can repair it. Does someone know when it's going to be replaced with a new one?

This is my second imac (first one in 2007) and they both have the same problem. I have an external drive connected along with the iphone and ipad. Like some people here, disconnecting them sometime works sometime not

My solution is simply a utility called PleaseSleep. Put the mac to proper sleep and thus it wakes up with no issues.

Cheers

Well, reading the posts here and everywhere looks like there is no permanent solution which is poor.

I've resorted to not sleeping my display automatically and started using the hot corner for display sleep when I leave my computer. This somehow brings the display back so far.

I sure do hope Apple recognise this issue and that it's a software and not a hardware fix. Either way I have Applecare so hopefully they find a fix in the next 3 years! lol.

You can add me to the list of users impacted by this issue. I have an iMac i7 running 10.6.6 no external HD attached, 7 port usb with a USB Scanner, Wireless Magic Mouse/Keyboard. I use Time Machine with Airport Time Capsule.

I starting noticing this issue after 10.6.5. The only pattern I've seen with console messages is that Time Machine just finishes a backup routine and attempts to eject the backup image from finder. Waking up the iMac via mouse/keyboard doesn't work, have to hold down the power button to force reboot the computer.

At one point I thought this was related to Parallels as other postings have indicated that users who just finished running Windows through Parallels experienced sleep issues. I don't know if that can be said for all users in this thread.

Outside of Time Machine and Parallels I typically have Mail, Safari, ScanSnap Manager 2.2, iTunes running and iPad attached when the system goes to sleep.

Reseting SMS / PRAM and Repairing permissions don't resolve this.

Hi Jason,

I understand that the computer gives you the window to user logon and password?

Have you tried to disconnect all the external devices and see if that changes anything?

Yes, after I force the computer to reboot when it doesn't wake up to mouse/keyboard input.

I have tried disconnecting all external devices, same result. The iMac doesn't freeze EVERY time is falls a sleep, its random in nature, I can't really determine what sets it off.

From reading the post's here and other places it seems that there are different reasons for why this happens making it difficult - or actually impossible - for users to determine what to do differently.

However, it seems that some problems are related to the situation where the computer are looking for a device such as an HD and are for some or another reason not successful in doing so. That might explain why removing devices can help in some situations - however it seems that the computer might have issues with connecting to something else next time.

I successfully identified one issue by investigating the Console messages and replacing a corrupt Keychain with a backup. This got the computer to work without problems for more than one week. But today, having the computer going to sleep with the screen saver on last night, it would not wake up. Console message indicate, the there was problems with connecting to the wireless TimeCapsule HD. So one cause removed, another seems to pop up.

This story, and many more here, seems to indicate that if we remove ALL external devices, wired and wireless, bluetooth and so on, the computer might start without problems.

Sorry for the long text, without any really help.

If you have time and energy, trying to understand what's in the Console messages might help you understand what causes this.