MBA- Hangover after sleep?

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MBA- Hangover after sleep?

Hi guys,

Mine is 13" MBA, 1.86 Ghz, 2Gs.

Sometimes, (frequency maybe once every 20times?) when I close my MBA, and it goes to sleep (i assume?), and when I reopen my MBA, the screen is black. If I close it again, and reopen it, it is still black, but sometimes the screen goes back to normal.

When it is black, no matter how hard i press F2, it is still dark. I will have to force quit the computer. Is it a normal situation?

Thanks

MBA 13" 1.86Ghz 2GB, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 8, 2011 5:05 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 9, 2011 3:31 AM in response to Nathan Hew

Hi, Nathan.

I've found your post and I saw that there's no answer to your question yet.
I'm facing the same problem as well...I'd like to know if by now you got the answer already from somewhere else.

Mine happened twice within a week. One time the screen show the "!" sign and showed that it needs to shutdown. The second time happened like yours, screen went black and I can't do anything with it, only had to hold power button to restart it again....

I'm worried that it's facing serious problem... I'd like to find out about this.
Please share your answer if you know what it is.
Or anybody who has the answer, please help.

Thank you.

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Answer 2

vcosta

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Jan 17, 2011 9:17 AM in response to itajigakesaitopain

Hi,

I am having the same problem. I've just lost more than two work hours (i had to leave in a hurry without saving a document and when i got back, the machine didn't start). When i closed the computer, it had more than two hours on the indicator. On arrival (after, say one hour), it didn't started. The first thought was for the battery. I plugged it and i had to press the on/off button three or four times before the new start, loosing all the unsaved information. It happened to me maybe four or five times already and the lack of response from apple is unacceptable.

Thank you

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Answer 3

Jan 18, 2011 10:30 PM in response to vcosta

I have had this same problem with my 11" Air at work. The screen backlight doesn't nessessary light up when the system wakes from sleep.

The system it self works and I can actually see something from the screen so that I can restart the system. Backlight has worked after the restart. Some times it needs just that I have to close the lid one or two times and wake the system. Most of the time I have the Air connected to external LED Cinema Display and with that it works every time, so it is just the backlight of the internal display.

I hoped to find some other people having the same issue. Now I have found you, so next step is to contact the official support. The issue it self happens randomly but way too often, like every third or fourth time when the lid is opened and system waked.

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Answer 4

sumoji

Level 1

0 points

Jan 19, 2011 1:02 AM in response to Juho Kirjavainen

I have the same problem here. I have closed the computer and when I reopened there was a beep sound once and it was black screen not showing anything. The screen came on few minutes later though.
I worry that if this will happen again and would like to find out what the cause and solution maybe. I hope this is something that apple is aware of that can be fixed.

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Answer 5

Jan 19, 2011 5:40 AM in response to sumoji

same issue - purchased MBA 13 at apple store Toronto on dec 23rd.
Happened once so far - after going to sleep, screen was black and the password window did not appear, nor did the mouse sign - I tried to close and open the shell 2 or 3 times to get it back to normal, but nothing appeared.
So I force shut it down (pushing power button for 3 seconds) and rebooted. it worked

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Answer 6

Sm@rtboy

Level 1

15 points

Jan 23, 2011 9:38 AM in response to Gregory Lambertie

Hey everyone

I had the same problem here with my 11' macbook air and I finally understood what it cam from. I hope it is the same problem you are experiencing, so that you can be reassured.

Very often, when I re-opened my MBA, the screen remained black. And pushing any button could not wake it, until I decided to push the power switch, which finally turned the computer on, re-starting it.

In fact, I discovered this came from the new "deep sleep mode". When you close the computer lid for more than one hour, the computer turns to deep-sleep mode. (if it is not plugged on power).
And to wake up from this deep sleep is longer than usual. It takes up to 15 seconds or more. So what you have to do is just wait and not touch any button. the screen will finally light up.

I think this is very baffling, especially on the new MBA 11', which has no flashing led that could reassure on the fact that the computer is still on. and I am very surprised that Apple did not inform the user on this particular feature, except on this page :

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392

I guess the Apple Customer Service will be very sought about this issue.

I hope my post will help. Sorry for my bad English....

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Answer 7

Jan 24, 2011 12:09 AM in response to Juho Kirjavainen

Now the problem has not shown up for few days. I have been wondering if it has something to do with the latest update to MacBook Air (Late 2010).

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4423

The description does not mention this problem, but it does not mean it could not fix this. I will continue to monitor the behavior of my Air.

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Answer 8

kwanbaga

Level 1

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Jan 27, 2011 8:47 PM in response to Nathan Hew

I'm experiencing similar issues. I'll close the lid of my MBA, open the lid a while later, and the screen remains black. The first few times I thought the machine was just having a hard time waking up, but today I noticed things were actually moving on the screen. It was so dark I could barely see anything, but sure enough the machine was awake and functional. The apple on the back of the lid is dark as well. I think the backlight is just failing to turn on. If I close the lid and reopen it (sometimes more than once), I can usually get it to light back up.

I plan to open a support case with Apple and will let you know if I hear anything. Hopefully one of us gets an answer/resolution!

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Answer 9

Sm@rtboy

Level 1

15 points

Jan 27, 2011 10:49 PM in response to kwanbaga

Hi everybody

I had the same problem as everyone here and finally found the solution.
I found it on this forum, on another thread talking about the same issue. The solution was given by an Apple Tech and it really worked for me.

In fact, when you wake up you MBA, don't ask me why but it looks for a startup disk. If no startup disk is selected then the back light screen does not turn on.
All you have to do is go to system preferences, startup disk, select the mac HD as the startup disk, restart, and there you go ! You will not encounter the back light issue again ! (I hope)

Please tell me if this works for you !

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Answer 10

kwanbaga

Level 1

0 points

Jan 31, 2011 10:34 AM in response to Sm@rtboy

I tried your suggestion, but it didn't help unfortunately. I also called Apple to see if they had any ideas. They had me disable the setting that requires a password after sleeping, repair disk permissions, do a PRAM reset, do an SMC reset, and safe boot. None of these things helped and the problem remains.

You can see a similar thread in the comments of this page:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1082333

My next step is to do a clean install since others have reported success that way.

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Answer 11

Feb 9, 2011 12:28 PM in response to vcosta

same here...black screen in almost every second time when i open the lid.... did smc pram rest..didnt help...now i uninstalled the flash...will see tomorrow if it helps..anyways it ***** on such an expensive and brand new machine

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Answer 12

Seanimal

Level 1

4 points

May 16, 2011 5:04 PM in response to Nathan Hew

I'm still experiencing this even after the software updates. Anyone find a cure?

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Answer 13

JoePSU

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May 26, 2011 5:57 PM in response to Seanimal

I'm curious to know if anyone has found a cure for this as well. I just found this thread today after experiencing the problem this afternoon. I've had my (refurbished) MBA for about 2 weeks now, but not experienced the problem until today.

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Answer 14

mkush

Level 1

8 points

Jun 7, 2011 6:15 PM in response to JoePSU

Well, I have no solution but definitely have the same problem. I have an 11" MBA. Many times, when opening the lid after a long-ish sleep, I see nothing UNLESS I shine a bright light on the screen. Then I can see that the computer is running. The backlight controls do not do anything. The only thing I can do at that point is to push the power button which brings up the shutdown dialog, then press Return to confirm the shutdown. The computer turns off normally. Then I press the power button to turn it back on. I hear the startup sound but still see nothing. Finally the screen lights up when I'm at the desktop. At that point the backlight is on, but at the lowest setting. I can turn it up and everything is normal.

That's the worst part but it also does something that may be related. Sometimes when I open the computer I see nothing. But if I press the power button it immediately wakes up. It's like it just doesn't notice that I opened the lid. That I could live with but the other problem is very irritating because if I left anything on screen unsaved there is no real way to do anything about it.

I don't know what to do. I'm afraid if I take it to the Apple store I'll be unable to reproduce the problem or they'll tell me to reset the PRAM, SMC, reinstall the OS, etc., and then the same thing will just happen again. And I live over an hour from an Apple store so I don't want to make repeat trips.

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Answer 15

Jun 21, 2011 5:26 PM in response to mkush

I'm seeing a similar problem with my early 2011 15" MBP. The display will be very dark, almost black, and the only way to make the display visible is to use the display brightness keys to increase the display almost up to it's maximum brightness setting. What is interesting about this behaviour is that the screen will stay very dark, almost black, until I get to somewhere very close to the maximum brightness setting, at which point the display will suddenly come to almost full brightness. When I reduce the brightness by just one notch (again, very close to max brightness) it suddenly goes almost completely dark again.

Is anyone else seeing this behaviour?

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