Solution to another Mac Pro sleep failure

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Level 2

199 points

Solution to another Mac Pro sleep failure

I recently developed problems with my 2008 Mac Pro (3,1) failing to enter sleep modes. Attached displays no longer went to sleep, and hard disks would not spin down. After many hours of investigating this, I found that the Nalpeiron Protec6 software was the culprit. Never heard of it you say? Well I had not either. It is installed surreptitiously by a variety of software vendors as an anti-piracy mechanism. In my case it was installed by Nik Software's Viveza 2 installer; currently this installer does not tell you that they are installing another 3rd party application.

The Nalpeiron Protec6 software is installed in /Library/StartupItems/Protec6 folder. You can tell if the daemon software is running by typing ps ax | grep 'nalpeiron' in Terminal.app.

Renaming, changing load order, etc., didn't help. Viveza 2 won't run without it. So for now, goodbye Viveza and goodbye Protec6. Nuking the Protec6 folder and a quick restart seems to be all that's needed to rid your system of this garbage. Hope this is helpful

Mac Pro 2008 Dual Quad Core, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Aug 30, 2010 9:53 AM

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Answer 1

sako75

Level 1

8 points

Oct 2, 2010 3:02 PM in response to Braindead Mac

I had the exact same problem. I've sent a message to Nik to see what they say the fix will be.

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Answer 2

Nov 28, 2010 7:38 AM in response to sako75

This problem is not just with Nik, but also onOne software. They both use Protec6 for their licensing and people have been experiencing these issues with either or (or both).

I have two solutions for you. Both come from the comments in this post:
http://trick77.com/2010/08/08/mac-doesnt-auto-sleep-anymore-hard-disks/

Solution 1: Some guy wrote an Applescript program that starts and stops the Protec6 service from running. So you can start it when you need it and then stop it so your computer can sleep. He has instructions and a download to the program in those comments.

Solution 2: Based on what someone says later in these comments, the newer update to Plug In Suite and Phototools fix this issue. Presumably bundled with a newer, bug free Protec6. I haven't tested this, but I bet if you install a demo version of the Plug In Suite or Phototools it will overwrite your Protec6 folder with the newer one and then Viveza will work as well and your computer will sleep again.

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