MBP 15" i7 wont automatically go to sleep

Based on the last few posts I've been trying to clean up my system using the Console and have a couple of questions.

First, I am never seeing any kind of message about a command to sleep in the system.log. Is that where the command to sleep should be appearing? i.e. - when the system preferences tell my computer to sleep, where is the error message that shows it isn't working.

Second, when I change my system preferences for the energy saver I'm getting this message in the console:

Aug 1 15:29:44 CHEM0146CHM-ML1 [0x0-0x26026].com.apple.systempreferences[423]: Couldn't find any matches.

Any thoughts on what this means? It almost looks to me like it can't write the system preferences because it can't find the file??

As a side note, I downloaded an adobe trial product and their downloader Akamai (error message below), was causing major problems - here is a link how to remove that if anyone else is having the same problem:

http://ignoredbydinosaurs.com/2010/03/akamai-plist-error-in-console-you-download ed-an-adobe-product-didnt-you

Aug 1 11:12:16 CHEM0146CHM-ML1 com.apple.launchd.peruser.502[101] (com.akamai.client.plist): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

Monte Helm wrote:
Based on the last few posts I've been trying to clean up my system using the Console and have a couple of questions.

First, I am never seeing any kind of message about a command to sleep in the system.log. Is that where the command to sleep should be appearing? i.e. - when the system preferences tell my computer to sleep, where is the error message that shows it isn't working.

Second, when I change my system preferences for the energy saver I'm getting this message in the console:

Aug 1 15:29:44 CHEM0146CHM-ML1 [0x0-0x26026].com.apple.systempreferences[423]: Couldn't find any matches.

Any thoughts on what this means? It almost looks to me like it can't write the system preferences because it can't find the file??

As a side note, I downloaded an adobe trial product and their downloader Akamai (error message below), was causing major problems - here is a link how to remove that if anyone else is having the same problem:

http://ignoredbydinosaurs.com/2010/03/akamai-plist-error-in-console-you-download ed-an-adobe-product-didnt-you

Aug 1 11:12:16 CHEM0146CHM-ML1 com.apple.launchd.peruser.502[101] (com.akamai.client.plist): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

You're definitely looking in the right place. That "Chem0146CHM-ML1" error seems like something worth resolving, at least in my estimate. Any guesses as to what program might be causing that error? Something you've got installed probably. You could try looking into the activity monitor to see what's running.

Message was edited by: stretchmonkey

I've been following (and posting) on this thread for over a month now and after the last few posts I got inspired to trouble shoot this problem with my console/activity monitor.

I'm happy to report that I (somewhat unexpectedly) had success. My MacBook now sleeps with the lid open. For me it was two problem programs - the Akamia installer from Adobe. And, the McAfee virus shield software (which I suspect was the real problem). My computer is running noticeably smoother now. I still think Apple needs to address this issue - but if you are impatient like me, I'd consider trying to clean your system with Console/Activity Monitor. Worked for me.

Good luck!

Message was edited by: Monte Helm

Monte Helm wrote:
I've been following (and posting) on this thread for over a month now and after the last few posts I got inspired to trouble shoot this problem with my console/activity monitor.

I'm happy to report that I (somewhat unexpectedly) had success. My MacBook now sleeps with the lid open. For me it was two problem programs - the Akamia installer from Adobe. And, the McAfee virus shield software (which I suspect was the real problem). My computer is running noticeably smoother now. I still think Apple needs to address this issue - but if you are impatient like me, I'd consider trying to clean your system with Console/Activity Monitor. Worked for me.

Good luck!

Hi Monte,

I would like to check this out. Is there somewhere a guide of what to do?

I wish I had seen this thread before I bought this.
Bought my new shiny 2.66 ghz 15" i7 MBP last week. just shuts down when the battery is depleted instead of going into suspend.
The part that REALLY ****** me off is my 2.16 ghz one for 07 never did that once. Same programs, same settings, same OS, everything the same except on a "new and improved" computer. I imported everything when I bought the new one. It can't be a program doing it if it's the same programs as the working one.

This is really interesting. May be that killing some processes may help to solve this problem (at least temporarily). But why should ordinary users do any research of their running processes? I did and it didn't helped at all.

The strange thing about all this is that those "harmful" processes don't interfere with "forced" sleep (i.e. closing the LID or choosing "sleep" menu item). Hence I think that this is actually a bug and Apple should definitely fix it ASAP.

Seems like Apple was working on something related to sleep mode. Really hope this one will help.

n748,

There isn't a guide that I followed, just a lot of searching on the message boards. I started with opening the console and looked for any error messages. I would cut out the message part (not any computer or time specific part of the message) and do a google search to see if I could get any hits on how to fix that specific message.

The real thing that helped was opening the activity monitor (should be in the >Applications>Utilities folder) and looked to see what was running. I quit all programs and then I saw that my virus software was running and doing something every 10 seconds or so. Once I uninstalled that software my computer started to sleep normally. When using the activity monitor if I saw something that was running and wasn't sure what it was, I did a google search for 'activity monitor ###' for the process that was running. It was time consuming, but eventually I figured it out.

I agree with a lot of the other posts - a regular user shouldn't have to do this - it is a bug that Apple needs to fix. If the computer can sleep by closing the lid, it should be able to run the same process to sleep with the lid open.

Message was edited by: Monte Helm

I personally don't think this is a bug. Just poorly written third party software.

It can't be an issue of third-party software if users (like me) have the issue even on a clean installation of OS X.

I got my MBP 13" 2 weeks ago and have a fresh 10.6.4.
Computer doesn't go to sleep when running on the battery and the display is open. However, "pmset sleepnow" works. So all that "Energy Saver" has to do is count idle minutes and issue "pmset sleepnow". I don't get how come apple can't fix this. Does the software have trouble counting idle minutes while using the battery?

sevkoms wrote:
Computer doesn't go to sleep when running on the battery

Does that mean it sleeps when on AC power?
I also wonder how this can be so difficult to fix?!

it goes to sleep on AC power according (or very close) to my settings and those settings for AC were pretty high: 5min for display and 15 for sleep. I noticed though that the computer actually goes to sleep even on the battery, just not what I set it to: 1min for display 2 minutes for sleep. In fact it varies, but never sleeps in 2 minutes according to my settings, the best result I got was 5 minutes so far, the worst was 15mins.

I got the same problem with my 13" macbook pro (C2D, 2,4Ghz) and my new 27" iMac (i3). Console.app does not show anything when the system should go to sleep. Only message is "Couldn't find any matches" when I edit the time for sleep mode and then close the systempreferences.

An update on my situation. It seems that after I installed the firmware update that was released a couple days ago, my computer is back to normal.