Sleep Error

Fair amount of posts concerning similar issues after 10.6.3 update. I had 3 shutdowns but happened differently than yours but with similar results. Seems you are at 10.6. Is this correct? Might check software update though for supplemental update that came out today.

Good luck

RM

Starnerg wrote:
Checked software update, no new update for me.

Try this: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1017

This is a frightneing issue for me because I think that shutting down with the power button is going to mess up my hard drive.

The biggest risk is that the contents of your drive might become corrupted. If your drive is formatted as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)", then it has features to minimize the chance of such corruption. If you also wait a minute or so before forcing it to shut down, OS X should have a chance to write to the disk any buffered updates, further reducing the chance of corruption.

After the screen goes blank when i select sleep I never hear the drive spin down. This is very close to human insomnia. You do close your eyes, but you can't fall asleep. On my mac the screen goes blank, but the drive never spins down, and the screen never shuts off.

What am I supposed to do?

You might launch the Console utility to see if there are any message there that explain the problem.

hello,

Try this hint : It was the solution for me.

Launch Terminal App.
After you launch Terminal, the first step is to determine which sleep mode your Mac is currently using (in case you wish to go back to it). You can both view and change the sleep mode using the Unix program pmset. To see your current settings, type pmset -g | grep hibernatemode. You should see something like this:

pmset -g | grep hibernatemode hibernatemode 3

Great, so your machine is using mode 3, whatever that might be. Well, thanks to the documentation for the handy Deep Sleep Dashboard widget, which puts your machine immediately into hibernation mode (so you don’t have to yank all the power sources to invoke it), we can tell exactly which mode is which:

0 - Old style sleep mode, with RAM powered on while sleeping, safe sleep disabled, and super-fast wake.
1 - Hibernation mode, with RAM contents written to disk, system totally shut down while “sleeping,” and slower wake up, due to reading the contents of RAM off the hard drive.
3 - The default mode on machines introduced since about fall 2005. RAM is powered on while sleeping, but RAM contents are also written to disk before sleeping. In the event of total power loss, the system enters hibernation mode automatically.

To change your sleep mode, you use pmset again, providing the variable and value you wish to assign. So to return to the old style sleep mode (which is mode 0 from the above list), enter this command:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

Press Return, and you’ll be asked for your password. Provide it, and your sleep mode has been changed. Note that restarting is not required for these changes to take effect.

Recover some drive space
If your machine was previously set to mode 3 (or 7 ) and you’ve reverted to the old style sleep mode, you’ve got one more step to take: recover the drive space used up by the copy of your system’s RAM, which was created the last time you slept the machine prior to making the switch. In Terminal, enter these two commands, pressing Return after each and providing your password when asked (in my case it didn't ask for my password again after changing the sleep mode)

cd /var/vm
sudo rm sleepimage

In my case it released almost 8GB of disc space. I guess it will closely amount the amount of RAM your system has. Ironically, by trying to make a "super system" by paying $2,000 for 8GB RAM plus the SSD drive, it might have been to much RAM to copy and recover to the SSD every time the system goes to sleep and wakes up...as they say "the best is sometimes enemy of the good".

I've had a few issues with my computer since installing 10.6.3
First off it took forever to install. Once I downloaded it and clicked on install it probably took 1/2 hour to install. Fortunately I had my iPhone to play with so I didnt get impatient and stop the process. (I know that would have been a bad thing to do) . Then when the computer restarted it took probably an hour before it finally reopened. This of course is very unusual for a software upgrade.
This morning when I got up, I couldnt get the computer to wake up. It had automatically woken up at 6:30AM (it was 7AM) when I came in and hit a key to turn off the screen saver and get to the computer. I was distracted. When I looked at the screen a few minutes later it was still in screen saver mode. Then I tried clicking on the keyboard and mouse several times. . It stayed in screen saver mode then the screen went blank like it does when going to sleep. I wondered if maybe the keyboard and mouse werent communicating to computer. I have 3rd party keyboard and mouse. So I wiggled USB plug ins at the USB hub. The next thing I know the computer had woken up.
But Safari was spinning and spinning. I had to force quit it. Other programs we also spinning but finally kicked in. It feels like a lot of programs are much slower to respond to mouse clicks ie Calendar reminders. When I click on a reminder that pops up, the menu doesnt drop down right away. This usually happens after I wake up the computer.

None of those messages shout to me that they're directly related to the cause of the problem. When relative to those message timestamps did you force your computer to shut down?

Were you able to download and install the 10.6.3 v1.1 updater?

Starnerg wrote:
I only install updates that come through software update.

I've seen strange problems fixed by installing downloaded "combo" OS X updaters. But if you want to live with your problem, then you should certainly follow your policy.

I have a different sleep problem since installing 10.6.3 (the Combo updater, twice):

I never put my Mac Pro 1,1 to sleep because sleep does not interact well with my multi-channel audio interface and the sound-editing software that I use almost constantly. However, I do put my display to sleep after one hour. This has never caused a problem until 10.6.3, which causes my computer apparently to stay awake, judging from the indicator light on the front of the machine, but no matter what I do, I can't wake up the display without forcing the computer to shut down and then restarting it. (I say apparently because I haven't found a way to make sure that the machine is actually still awake.) Has anyone else had a similar experience?

{quote:title=Starnerg wrote:}My computer is set to sleep after an hour aswell.{quote}

My computer is not set to sleep after an hour -- only the display is set to sleep.

Thanks for the tip - I've been running in mode 0 since I got an intel machine, but didn't realize that the system never deleted the sleep image. You just magically gave me 4 GB of HD space!

You rawk!