Mac Pro does not auto-sleep (manual sleeping if fine!)

I have exactly the same problem with my 2009MP. I've tried everything I can do. I'm down to just the keyboard and mouse, so I does not seem to be USB related. Hopefully someone can help us both.

Dan,

You might want to try repairing the hard disk permissions, from what I have read it works for some folks. I tried it with no luck.

I found a work around in another thread. I did a quick test (1 minute) and it worked. *DragonOne PleaseSleep* is little app that does the job. Not a perfect solution, but it will save some electrical costs! BTW, after starting PleaseSleep, it runs in the menu bar. You will need to set it to launch at startup in it's preferences settings.

Message was edited by: abugbitme

Exactly the same problems as those described above: forced sleep works (by using the power button or closing the lid) but automatic sleep doesn't (using 'Energy Saving' preferences).

Tried every single piece of advice here and on other posts: reset PRAM/ SMC, verified disc, repaired permissions, deleted the power saving preference files, cleared caches & history, restarted in every conceivable mode... The only things that worked were safe boot and creating a new user account which means it must be a software issue.

Disabled/ removed/ paused/ reinstalled every piece of software I could but to no avail. The most frustrating thing? Having to wait for 5 mins every time I tried something to check whether the damned thing was going to go to sleep.

In the end, and in desperation, I took the advice of Dino X and downloaded PleaseSleep. Success! A genius piece of software. It forces sleep when the Energy Saver preferences cut in but, even if I don't set exceptions, it won't force sleep if there's a DVD playing (for example).

Only had the Mac for a few months and I'll never go back to that other, unmentionable operating system; the Mac's just too good but I'm vexed that I'm having to use third party software to get it to work as it should (and was) - feels like a bit of a Win *s solution to me.

OK, ignore some of my previous email. After writing I searched a little further. I opened up the console and it turns out that when I uninstalled the software for my Vodafone 3G dongle a few weeks ago it left traces (despite using CleanApp).

Every 10 seconds it was checking for access and thus stopping the 'Book from sleeping. As I couldn't find the exact file responsible I deleted almost everything with a Vodafone reference and it worked. Not quite sure which file is responsible (and can't be bothered to hunt further) but it's still searching at boot but no longer continuing to search.

Sleep works again and no need for 3rd party software. Cool.

I have the same problem and I was unable to resolve the issue,so I took the computer to the apple sore for repair.It seems to be a os software issue.The
tech's are working on the problem and I will let you know what they do to fix it.

I bought one of these 2 months ago and in that time I have had:

1. Faulty Graphics Card
2. The well documented humming PSU noise
3. The Bluetooth issues...and
4. The failure to auto sleep

Perhaps Steve Jobs should change his catch-phrase to "It Just Doesn't Work".

For the money, these machines are cr@p quality...I've had a MBP for 12 months with no trouble but this machine is a very bad Apple experience

Paul

Has anyone given thought about their network settings, depending on how its set up it has been known to prevent sleep, for example in MobileMe preferences panel, if Back to My Mac is turned on my computer will not sleep, other possibilities such as file sharing, screen sharing etc... might prevent your system from sleeping.

Goto
Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
Delete/move to trashcan
com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
Reboot
Set new sleep settings and wait for sleep mod to activate.
It worked for me.

Please disregard my last post this fix did not work after reboot.

Manual sleep works perfectly. Auto-sleep, not at all. I don't know what the heck is up because I can't find anything in the console logs. I also just recently did a fresh install of the 10.6 and only did the Apple updates, yet it still won't auto-sleep. So I'm guessing it's an OS issue of some sort.

I find some (some, not all) webpages prevent auto-sleep, if they're open when auto-sleep is attempted.

In particular: BBC News, eBay...

Closing just those tabs in Firefox allows auto-sleep for me.

I have exactly the same problem with my early 8-core 2008 Mac Pro. No pograms is left open and yet it doesn't go to sleep automatically. I' ve tried everything mentioned here and the SMC reset too and also removed some extra drivers (such as Steer Mouse) but nothing helps. I've also done the permissions, and other maintenance things.

The problem has been around for about a month for me. It was already in 10.6.3 and still present in 10.6.4. It's really annoying because last night it woke up by itself from manual sleep (for maintenance routines?) but it didn't go back to sleep and was open the whole night. 😟