Energy Saver Sleep Not Working At All

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Level 1

15 points

Energy Saver Sleep Not Working At All

Just noticed last night that the energy saver sleep option does not work at all on a brand new (3 day old) 27" iMac 2.8GHz Quad-Core.

I've reinstalled SL (not a complete format and reinstall, just by installing over this current version) and updated again, this still hasn't fixed it. The error in the console is:

Sep 16 11:01:34 Andys-iMac [0x0-0x16016].com.apple.systempreferences[3183]: Couldn't find any matches.

This only appears when changing the 'Sleep' timeout, the display timeout and other settings work perfectly fine. If I open the com.apple.PowerManagement.plist, the sleep timeout integer never changes unless I manually edit it. I've also tried deleting that plist, along with com.apple.systemconfiguration.plist.

This does seem to be a reasonably common problem across the Internet, and a very old one at that. I was wondering if anyone has found a solution other than formatting and starting my whole iMac again. I've spent a long time the past few days transferring from my old Macs, deactivating and reactivating/installing expensive, large softwares, etc., etc. so am trying to avoid formatting the drive at all costs.

Thanks in advance,
Andy

Mac OS X (10.6.4),  iMac |  iPhone 4 |  MBP L'09 2.8GHz |  Win 7

Posted on Sep 16, 2010 3:08 AM

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Answer 1

dieseL. Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 16, 2010 4:27 AM in response to dieseL.

I hate to double post, but I can't edit (...) so here's a little update:

Within the com.apple.PowerManagement.plist file, the following part is not being READ from or WRITTEN to. If I manually edit the integer value, it has no effect in Sys. Prefs.. Likewise, if I edit the time in Sys. Prefs. I get the error I've posted above in the Console window and the value does not change.

<key>Disk Sleep Timer</key>
<integer>10</integer>

All other values in that plist are updated via Sys. Prefs..

Edit: Just tried changing the setting on my old iMac (L' 2006 - White) - the setting does not change either, exactly the same error & results. Is this just a SL bug which no-one notices?!

Message was edited by: dieseL.

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Answer 2

Sep 16, 2010 2:12 PM in response to dieseL.

I'm experiencing the same issues stated by dieseL. Below is the console message I receive when attempting to change the Computer Sleep timer. The Display Sleep timer is working correctly.

9/16/10 4:00:01 PM [0x0-0xe40e4].com.apple.systempreferences[8788] Couldn't find any matches.

Any help getting this resolved would be greatly appreciated.

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Answer 3

Sep 16, 2010 5:43 PM in response to justinflst8

I know it's not a panacea, but it worked this time. I ran a disk permissions check, then repaired disk permissions and everything in the Energy Saver preferences seems to be working fine for now. The computer goes to sleep as it should. You may want to give that a try if you haven't already.

Justin

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Answer 4

dieseL. Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 17, 2010 5:22 AM in response to justinflst8

No more console error message?
Just run the repair, still no joy:

Sep 17 13:22:15 Andys-iMac [0x0-0x22022].com.apple.systempreferences[183]: Couldn't find any matches.

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Answer 5

dieseL. Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 20, 2010 12:45 PM in response to dieseL.

I hate to bump, but it's really irritating me now. Has anyone got ANY suggestions I've not yet tried? It seems all the other threads are unanswered so I'm not too hopeful 😟

Thanks in advance for any responses.

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Answer 6

Trimbach

Level 1

0 points

Sep 26, 2010 9:44 AM in response to dieseL.

I ran into a similar problem recently... Energy Saver worked fine for a long time, then poof, it stopped. Manually selecting Sleep (through the Apple menu or a hot-corner) worked great, but neither the display nor the computer would ever sleep on their own. Repaired permissions, repaired the disk, booted into Safe Mode, trashed the Energy Saver prefs file... nothing worked. I even installed PleaseSleep and THAT didn't work either.

After several hours of staring at log files and the activity monitor trying to find some sort of misbehaving process (and fixing a number of other minor issues along the way) I noticed that somewhere along the line the file at /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/PowerManagement.bundle had been renamed to PowerManagement.disabledbundle, effectively turning it off. I renamed the file to PowerManagement.bundle (via the Terminal, logged in as root) rebooted and Tah-Dah! All is now well. (I believe the problem was caused when I tried to install some Eaton UPS power management software... the software was terrible and I took it out, but didn't realized it had modified a system file in the process. Bad software! Bad!)

So, dieseL give that a try. Hope this helps... it was very frustrating!

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Answer 7

WZZZ

Level 6

13,220 points

Sep 26, 2010 9:56 AM in response to dieseL.

If you really can't isolate the cause, and sometimes this is extremely difficult, there is PleaseSleep.

http://www.dragonone.com/products/macosx/pleasesleep/

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Answer 8

dieseL. Author

Level 1

15 points

Sep 26, 2010 3:12 PM in response to Trimbach

Just checked the PowerManagement.bundle and it seems normal.

@WZZZ: Not attacking you, but Apple, I don't want to have to download third party software to do the most basic thing on an overpriced computer. It's almost a fundamental part of any computer - standby/sleep timers. Two of my three Macs suffer this identical issue, along with countless other people. It appears to have been an issue since 10.5 - not promising.

Thanks for the responses; I'm not trying to be ignorant towards any of you - I'm just a bit irritated by this seemingly trivial but unfixable problem.

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Answer 9

Oct 17, 2010 6:03 AM in response to dieseL.

Same here. Tried a lot of things: repair volumes, deactivate TimeMachine. Nothing helps. Computer doesn't go into sleep as supposed to.

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Answer 10

Nov 5, 2010 6:40 AM in response to dieseL.

Every Mac I've had since OS X was released has refused to go to sleep when it's supposed, does the Energy Saver pref pane actually do anything ?

Losing faith in Apple these days, even basic things like this don't work properly. Just setup another brand new Mac and out of the box Sleep doesn't cut in when it should. Ridiculous.

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Answer 11

Nov 30, 2010 3:18 AM in response to dieseL.

Hi everyone,

Are you using Google Chrome? It's seems that it prevents our Apple machines to automatically go to sleep.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=54550

Best regards,
Alain

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Answer 12

Dec 17, 2010 4:27 PM in response to dieseL.

Add me to the list of those with this problem.

One thing I've found that, in my case, it's due to a conflict with an application. If I restart the computer and log in to my account, the Screen Saver kicks in after the time period of inactivity that I specified and a while later, the screen shuts down, again as specified.

However, after opening my usual applications, neither saver works happens automatically, but putting the cursor in the corner or selecting Sleep from the Apple menu both work properly.

I know that I could restart and test after opening each application but that's pretty time consuming for something that should be easier to troubleshoot.

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