MacBook Pro is going into sleep mode randomly

This happened to me with my iMac which is sadley no longer with us. I purchased a Mac Book Pro, and had not trouble with it until I got an external monitor and keyboard. It seemed to happen only with the keyboard connected, so I stopped using the external monitor for a while, and never had any problem with it, until I bought a new keyboard, and now it is happening again.

I'd love to know if there is a fix for this, because it is very frustrating.

SOLUTION FOR ME:

Two days ago, my MBPr was doing this every time i moved it an inch. Sleep, black screen, then on to password prompt. Took it to Genius Bar but coudn't replicate the issue once. Very frustrating. Got it home and again, sat back on the bed, and every time I moved it at all it happened. After playing around a bit and reading this thread, I realised I could only get it to occur when I was using it on the bed and my parents house where I was visiting but not anywhere else. Asked my dad if he might know if there might be some sort of magnet in the bed for some reason ad he replied "Yeah of course, it's a special magnetic matress that's supposed to be good for your back". Slapped head. Never would have suspected that.
The magnet in the base comes close to another magnet and the MBPr thinks the lid has just been closed and goes to sleep.

Problem solved. Never happened again.

SOLUTION WORKS GREAT !!!

Toby1one, you are so smart. I had the same exact problem ever since I bought my MacBook Pro. Every time I use the computer on my lap and move the laptop to show somebody something or shift around a little, the laptop would shut off and then password screen. After reading your post I realized that I have a wallet with a magnet money clip built in. I took the wallet out of my pants and the laptop never shuts down any more. Thank you so much. This has been driving me crazy.

I got a brand new 13" a week ago and started having this issue - after reading the strand i realized the sleeve I bought has a magnet at the end and I was working with the sleeve under the comp. So far so good.

thanks.

OMG. Macbook Pro 10.6.8, -- was looking at a reinstall of last Carbon Copy backup, of course 3 weeks old, would have lost some data, etc. Was sure it was a OS software issue. Read this thread. HA. Looked back over the last 24 hours of the random sleep thing happening, and could see in all situations the DREADED MAGNET present. Now: no magnet anywhere, no problem.

Yesterday I was setting up to record Borns for a Front and Center show with my brand new 48 track pro tools recording rig,

and I set my iPad with magnetic case next to my macbookpro which were both sitting on the metal audio rack. My MacBook Pro went to sleep out of the blue holy smokes!!!! Made it through the show without it happening again and we had a backup record system as well but so glad I found this article, I was about to reinstall everything, it had never done that before.

This is definitely a magnet issue. I had a wallet with a magnetic clip sitting right next to the MacBook 2011 17" and every so often it would go to sleep. I after reading this thread, I took the wallet and moved it on top of the speaker and boom, it went to sleep.

Hi John,

Certainly others have reported sleep issues, both in Lion and prior to it. IDK that there is an overall solution to it. One thing to try is an SMC Reset: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964

I found a fix for this problem. In my case the problem was my iphone on palmrest. Read this article for more info http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2917

Just wondering if this worked out for you?

Did you ever found out how to fix it? Mine is still showing the same problems but I haven't tried verify disk yet.

Well if they've offered you that, I'd be taking full advantage of it while you can.

Your far better doing that than fixing it yourself in my opinion.

note: this is a temporary fix , you might need to dump the file again if the system starts to go into random sleep mode again..i suppose apple should release an update that is fixing this issue

I have a 2011 MBP and It never happened while I had Lion, it started happening after Mountain Lion. Its progressively getting worse. I'm going to take it in to the Genius Bar this week.