Power Mac G4 sleep problem

Have you tried creating another User account and seeing if the Sleep functions in that account?

-Douggo

Was your installation of Tiger an erase and install or an "upgrade"?

When the usual fixes for sleep issues do not work it has been my experience that an erase and install of the operating system, then combo updater, then load applications, then transfer user files from backup (or whatever) will "fix" the problem.

Sleep is a software driven process that is influenced by hardware. It is a fairly complex set of rules that seems easy to corrupt depending on the mac, the operating system, additional applications loaded, and peripherals. If anything is out of wack, sleeplessness results. If you claim that the hardware is base (no peripherals), no pci cards installed (??), no haxies installed, caches have been cleared and preferences checked then some file deep in the os is probably corrupted.

Some claim that an erase and istall will fix it. My experience is that an erase and install is better.

Do you have any PCI cards installed. Some can keep the computer from sleeping at all, some (Like my USB 2.0 card) will crash it on wake.

If you have another hard drive I would recommend installing to it. It will make things much easier to fix for many of the user files. Iphoto, itunes, etc need special treatment but documents can be just dragged across.

Just my 2 cents having done it myself.

I am only able to sleep the display.
I have tried all options kindly listed and compiled by Dale over the past months-to no avail. I have contacted Sonnet who have no suggestions but have asked to be kept informed.

The installation of the ATA133 pci card and WesternDigital 120gb drive is the only addition I have made. This is with a clean install in my primary drive.
Because my work is principally with large tif files I keep my user files on a second (partitioned) slave drive which also includes a partition dedicated to my previous OS Panther: when I boot from this drive (and another with OS9.2.2) the sleep routines function perfectly; but not in Tiger.

You can see that I run a belt and braces operation.

Any suggestions?

Well then I would say that with Tiger, Apple has fiddled with disk arbitration... again.

When I used to have an old mac(9600 made in 1996) that used XPostFacto to run X I would routinely swap kext files from previous systems to gain functionality of removeable disks, usb readers and cards, scsi pci cards, etc. and run the newer versions of X.

It seems that Apple changes these kext files to optimize their own hardware and leaves the guessing of how to handle it to the makers of peripherals and pci cards. It was the frustration of making things just work that caused me to "upgrade" my mac to the current box.

If Apple has done it again then Sonnett (or whoever) may or may not have figured out how to resolve the issue with the ATA133 card. It does not seem to be anything that you are responsible for.

If you reset the pmu and have a clean install of the os then that is about all that you can do. The rest is up to programmers and manufacturers. There may be a kext file that is swappable from Panther but I would not hold my breath. Tiger is a big shift in file systems. If you are going to test swap kexts, make sure it is on a disposable clone of Tiger.

My Dad's G4 (867 dual, OSX 10.3.9) seems to have taken to not going to sleep properly as well.

If I press sleep from the Apple menu it sounds as if it's going to sleep, but when the screen goes blank the fans are still running and the white light in the power button on the front of it stays permanently lit instead of pulsing as it usually does when sleeping.

We have recently installed a LaCie FW800 PCI card to this machine, and the lack of sleep has probably been occuring since then, so could that be the cause? If so is it rectifiable?

Also, today the screen has been going white when the machine supposedly sleeps, but I'm not sure if this is part of the same problem - what do you think?

Despite this not being a critical situation by any means, any comments would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

David

This is for a Mac that won't sleep.
USB devices and hubs often cause Macs to not sleep or wake quickly from sleep (notably HP printers and scanners). Disconnect all USB except for keyboard and mouse and try. If it sleeps, add one back at a time testing after each one to find the culprit.

If you've set your Mac to recieve faxes, it may not be able to sleep. It might also have a damaged preferences file.

If you use your Mac for faxing, open System Preferences. click Print & Fax, click the Faxing tab, and uncheck the Recieve Faxes On This Computer box.

If that does'nt work or you've never faxed on your Mac, go to Finder/Hard Drive /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration and delete the com.apple.PowerManagement.plist and com..apple.AutoWake.plist files (if your Mac asks, type your admin. password).

If the latter file isn't present in the folder, go to user name(probably your name)/Library/Preferences, delete the com.apple.systemuiserver.plist file, and reboot your Mac.

Hope this helps!
P.S. One member here reported this (Michael Gleason);
"I have had this problem with my IMac G5. It is surprisingly irritating. LaCie's Silverkeeper backup software was the cause. By default it gave itself permission to wake up the computer to check if a backup was needed. Do you have this or a similar program installed which has scheduled activities including wake-up permissions as an option?"

Dave Hamilton provided this link, xlr8yourmac.com, to a member, which addresses failure of deep sleep with some users that updated and added new FireWire and USB cards.

Cheers!
DALE

A number of sleep-related issues can appear after incremental Mac OSX updates, including the inability to properly go to sleep, problems waking from sleep, and having your display go to sleep without your Mac going to sleep. The most common culprit is Bluetooth. Try these tips to fix your sleep problems.
WAKE UP
In System Preferences>Bluetooth, uncheck Allow Bluetooth Devices To Wake This Computer. If you are using a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, you'll have to wake your Mac by pressing the power button.
FILE CORRUPTION
Your Bluetooth preference file may be corrupt-you'll need to delete it. Turn Bluetooth off, then go to the /Users/user name/Library/Preferences folder. Look for a file called com.apple.Bluetooth.plist and trash it.The OS will create a new preference file when you enable Bluetooth again.
ENERGY SAVER
If you have issues with a Mac or display that goes to sleep at inappropriate times, you may have a problem with Energy Saver. Delete the following .plist files and restart:

-/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist

-/Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist--(username is your name or System Administrators name).

-/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.AutoWake.plist
A restart is very important after deleting these plists. After a reboot your Mac will then generate new ones.

In some cases, running MacOS X's cron tasks-maintenance that the OS performs automatically if you leave your Mac on 24 hours a day-can resolve many sleep problems. If you don't want to leave your Mac on, you can use MacJanitor, Yasu, or OnyX free at Versiontracker.com.

Some, in these forums, have had luck fixing sleep issues downloading the combo update from this site (yours may be corrupt), not Software Update, disconnect all firewire + USB devices except keyboard + mouse, Repair Permissions, re-install update, Repair Permissions again + try.
Yours would be the 10.3.9 combo update. Others here would use the one for their version.

Cheers!
DALE

Have you disconnected all the peripherals and tried sleep?

This would include any pci cards.

Hello,
Try disconnecting all Usb devices...
and perhaps a pram reset.

Regardss,
Ioannis