Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Unresponsive Mac Pro after many hours

Hi all,

I am having this problem that my Mac Pro becomes unresponsive and won't 'come back' after the display goes to sleep. This only happens once the machine has not been touched for a long time eg. 5+ hours or so. The machine does not appear to be in sleep mode as the light on the front of the machine is just on not 'sleeping'. The problem is it just won't come back.

This is a Mac Pro running Mountain Lion - You should know that I did a clean install on a new partition, then imported my data from the old partition (containing OS 10.6) via Migration assistant. Everything runs fine except this and the only way to get out of it is to do a force power down.

It is running 10.8.2.

Can anyone tell me how to troubleshoot this one?

Thx

Felix

Intel Dual Quad Core Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.6), 12 GB RAM, Motu 828 Audio interface FW 400, Logic Mackie Control

Posted on Dec 20, 2012 8:36 AM

27 replies

Dec 31, 2012 8:41 AM in response to mad-kiwi

I have not yet no. It seems that there is some problem in Mtn Lion causing this to happen. It's very helpful to know that this is happening on a new machine like yours, not just 3 year old mac Pros like mine.

Please post here if you discover any fixes, I'll do the same.

Dec 31, 2012 8:47 AM in response to Linc Davis

Hi Linc

Firstly, sorry for being such a PITA!

I have booted from my 10.7 Lion partition and this issue does not happen. Everything is running fine.

(I also did a clean install (with no migration of any data) of 10.8 and this unresponsive issue DOES still happen. The only additional apps I installed where dropbox, launchbar & 1password).

I am assuming that this means that it is probably NOT a hardware issue.

Do you think you would be able to review any of my console logs in the 10.8 system or suggest what I should look for in the logs?

I would very much appreciate as I would love to get Mtn Lion running on this machine.

Thx

Felix

Dec 31, 2012 1:32 PM in response to composerguy78

Out-of-date versions of 1password have been known to cause some issues in previous systems.

You should take a careful look at the support sites for all of those add-ons, or simply not install them.

"The vast majority of wounds from software updates are self-inflicted."

mad-kiwi

Level 1

0 points

Dec 31, 2012 2:05 PM in response to composerguy78

Hi Felix,

Outside of the core OS the only apps we have in common is Dropbox. I don't use launchbar or 1password.

I'll uninstall drop box and see if things improve.

Cheers,

Mike.

Jan 3, 2013 3:20 PM in response to composerguy78

Felix,

I've had the same model Mac Pro and the same problem really since I've purchased it back in 2009. I have gone through 4 OS iterations (Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion) and even did a clean install at one point. I've done all as listed in this post and much beyond this and I've have never been able to resovle. The other issue is that I've always had trouble even getting the machine to sleep on it's own and use a program called "Please Sleep" to even force into sleep mode on a regular basis..... Not the answer you were looking for, but if you ever find a solution please post....

Dan

Jan 3, 2013 8:41 PM in response to dcoughlin

Hi Dan,

This was really helpful. I really appreciate this. I DID have a similar issue to this when I was on Snow Leopard but it turned out to be the firewire card that caused weird sleep problems - at least when I removed it they stopped. I eneded up using 'Please Sleep' to force it to sleep which worked perfectly.

I haven't had these issues whilst running my Lion partition however. Everything seems to work fine in Lion. It's just started being fussy again with this strange -no response issue after sleep etc. I'm now trying a few things. I wish I knew how to understand the console better as I'm sure

I was listening to my fave mac fixit podcast (MacGeekGab) and on the latest episode entering the terminal command below cleared up a similar problem for a user. Worth a try for you perhaps?

sudo shutdown -h now

Jan 4, 2013 9:25 AM in response to dcoughlin

I am getting some advice from experts that this may be from a bad drive. Have you tried installing the OS on a clean (zeroed out) drive?

I am going to test, currently wiping drives to test a clone.

Jan 4, 2013 9:36 AM in response to composerguy78

Yes, I did a clean install of SL and one point and did it with a newly installed drive and then switched that to my default startup disk. The old primary boot drive is now a secondary "backup" boot disk that I clone once a week with SuperDuper. Problem remained the same.

Dan

Jan 4, 2013 10:31 PM in response to dcoughlin

Okay, currently testing a clone with a clean install now.

In the mean time I thought this might other people who have posted with this problem. This is from a podcast I listen to called the Mac Geek Gab. I emailed in my problem, I got this back as a reply.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/features/mac_geek_gab/

"I think the first thing to try would be to install Mountain Lion on an external disk (and/or Lion on the internal disk). We're assuming the issue is ML (and it may be), but … it's possible it's simply a bad drive. In fact, it sounds exactly like it's a bad drive and the system can't recover from it.

Another way to test would be a surface scan of the disk to see if you find any bad sectors. But I would only use that as positive confirmation: if it comes back negative I still wouldn't rule out some drive-related issue until you confirm that this happens with ML without the internal drive involved (like you have with Lion).

Also, has your clean install been on a freshly-formatted internal drive? I just want to make sure it's *truly* clean and that you're not doing a clean install over the top of existing data. THat, too, could be a factor here."

Jan 7, 2013 7:46 AM in response to composerguy78

Hi All,

I just wanted to report that since following the above directions, I am NO LONGER experiencing this issue!!

I am about to copy the system back to the SSD drive.

I don't know of the best way to wipe clean an SSD drive so I am currently researching that.

Keep you posted. To all that that have had this issue, I would recommend giving this a try!

Best regards

Felix

Jan 7, 2013 7:51 AM in response to composerguy78

Felix,

So are you saying the issue/resolution was a bad drive, doing a clean install of ML, or both?

Thanks,

Dan

Jan 7, 2013 7:56 AM in response to dcoughlin

A bad drive.

The drive was not properly erased before I installed to it.

When I installed the (non-clean install) to a new clean partition, I had no problems. I did try a clean install on the bad drive, but without success. I copied the non-clean install to the new partition and it's been fine.

Unresponsive Mac Pro after many hours