Idle sleep problems

May be silly questions, but: Is Energy Saver configured to allow sleep after an idle period of time? Do you happen to have Wake on LAN enabled? Have you tried a vanilla OS X installation? Have you deleted the power management preference files in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/?

You might want to open Activity Monitor to see what is happening when you try quitting the open applications that would normally be running when the computer should sleep. Any chance you are using a BT mouse and/or keyboard? Have you seen OS X- Why your Mac might not sleep or stay in sleep mode?

A possible solution to try is re-installing the 10.6.4 Combo Updater.

You've pretty much exhausted what I can come up with. Though this may not help either visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on solving wake and sleep problems. Perhaps Dr. Smoke has included something in his FAQ that will be helpful.

I had a similar problem with a 27" iMac's display not going to sleep. Here's my post;

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2611070&tstart=0

I found that when I have Screen Sharing active in System Preferences the display will not sleep. Note that I have no sharing active in that pane, and the display sleeps on schedule. My 4 year old iMac and MacBook Pro at home are not affected with Screen Sharing on.

This seemed to occur after the Security Update 006 which was a week or so ago.

As Steve says, "...Apologies I know there have been 1000's of posts about this but I think I have been through all of them.."

Sorry to add to an already 'resolved' post, but...

When one is checking processes (All and Active) in Activity Monitor, how does one know which process (out of several) is causing the sleep issue?

Steve,
Thanks for the reply!

That's some good info in the KB...but info that I've tried, except 'new user acct'. My problem is it's intermittent. EG, upon auto wake this morning it din go to sleep after 10 mins, per default setting. I did have an iCal 'reminder' on the screen, but that shouldn't be the culprit as I've had auto-sleep occur even with a reminder on the desktop. I responded to the reminder, opened A.Monitor and went and got a cup of coffee....etc. When I came back in about 12-13 mins the puter was asleep! (BTW, I've not had any problems with monitor sleep) Yesterday it was not auto-sleeping and I did an SMC reset, and it worked fine the rest of the day...until this moring.

So, it's intermittent. What I see persistently in A.Monitor is Dock and Dashboard Client. Could something like WeatherBug widget be the culprit? That's my main question: how to know which process out of many is the culprit; I mean I have a pretty long list of processes.

I guess I'll quit those 3-4 processes (Dock and WeatherBug) the next time I have the problem and see if that helps. And, I'll try the new user acct approach.

Thanks again,
Cheers to you too

Dave

Hello all,
I have the same problem. My macbook is not sleeping when idle. This afternoon I upgraded my memory and guess what: the problem was gone.

Unfortunately the problem returned so I had about 3 hours the pleasure of having a macbook that went to sleep as it is supposed to. I think I saw the screen flickering once before it returned.

The question is: what is being reset when you take out the battery, take out the memory and place (new) memory?

I tried before all the resets that are suggested. However, when I do a PMU reset and I hold the power button for 5 seconds, the led flickers and the macbook boots. If I follow the steps that are suggested by apple to do a PMU reset I should hold the power button for 5 seconds, release it (till here everything the same) and than press again to boot (this step happens automatically). Is this the way it works with you guys>

Thanks!