iMac won't sleep after Mavericks upgrade

Am experiencing the same problem with my 2011 Mini. I can manually sleep the machine from the Apple Menu and it stays asleep, but the inactvity sleeper (set for one hour) doesn't seem to be working. Monitor sleeps fine (set for 15 minutes). Mail seems to be generating a whole lot of network chatter which may be keeping the thing awake, but I haven't tested shutting down Mail to see if that helps yet. Getting me to remember to manually sleep the machine is a long shot at best.

My iMac 2011 won't sleep after the Mavericks upgrade. Grrrr....

Ok, looking at the logs, the only thing that shows up at the time sleep should occur is:

10/24/13 1:20:12.537 PM WindowServer[12366]: handle_will_sleep_auth_and_shield_windows: Deferring.

No reason for deferring is given. Other log entries are 8 minutes before and 7 minutes after. That just ain't right.

OK, it appears I have resolved this on my machine. Not sure exactly which of these was the key, but I went to the Startup Items folder (/Library/Startupitems) and pulled a couple of every old, very defunct items, and updated the X-Rite Device Manager (Colormunki Smile) and rebooted and that seems to have solved the problem. These were the only changes I made between automagic sleep not working and working. The two startup items I dumped were QuickBackStartupItem and Unlockupd. Both were things that were dragged over from previous machines via Migration Assistant, which I will never, ever use again because of the mess it made on this machine. Thought I had found all of the problematic files, but I'm still turning them up. But, as a practical matter the most likely culprit here was the X-Rite Device Manager. It was the only one of the three items that I am sure was actually running, and it was obviously updated for Mavericks today. At least today is when the updater popped up on my machine. But in any case, the problem was definitely something unobtrusive that loads at boot time. A good place to start looking anyway.

My Macbook Pro early-2010 has the same symptoms: sleep does not work at all.

I noticed after arriving from work, on the first Monday that followed the Maveicks update, that my Mac was very hot, like it was on the whole day long, but I never minded... The next day, the same thing... So I decided to do some testing and ascertained that every sort of sleep mode (auto-sleep / closing lid / clicking 'sleep' on the Apple menu) only turns off the monitor, but the front light and apparently HD still stay on.

I believe it is something everyone is experiencing (but most did not notice), and an update is urgently required. I dislike a lot to have to turn my laptop off everytime instead of the great and flawless sleep mode I am used to...

No, this is definitely not something everyone is experiencing. My Laptop sleeps just fine regardless of how I put it to sleep, though generally it's just by closing the lid. My Mini seelps normally when sleep is invoked from the Apple Menu or by Cmd-Option-Eject from the keyboard. I was however premature with my statement that I had resolved the auto sleep issue. I have resolved it only for the first time auto sleep is invoked via the timer in the Energy Saver pane. Once I wake it, it goes back to only sleeping the display. I have been hammering away at it for several days, killing suspect processes without success. It's very frustrating. There aren't a lot of processes left to suspect.

When the Mini is truly asleep, my network connection to the router goes down (it's an ethernet connection and the light for that node goes out as it's not set to wake for network access), external drives sleep, and the light on the front of the Mini flashes. The Mini is cool to the touch after a few minutes and the very slight vibration for the internal drive and fans are absent. Logs indicate proper sleep, and show nothing happening whie the machine is asleep. So, I am absolutely sure on that one.

On the Laptop, the light also flashes when the lid is closed indicating normal sleep and it disappears from the WiFi network as expected. There is no heat buildup as would be expected if the machine were actually awake.

So, no this is not a case of something that is happening to everyone that they are failing to notice. But I am really baffled by the auto sleep working once after a reboot, but never again until the first time after another reboot. That's just weird.

Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.

Feedback

Same issue. TRY THIS:

1. 1. Shut down your Mac and wait 10 seconds.
2. 2. Press the power button.
3. 3. Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold down the Shift key.You should press the Shift key as soon as possible after you hear the startup tone, but not before.
4. 4. Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple logo and progress indicator (spinning gear).

Put Mac to sleep while in safe mode.

Lastly, leave safe mode by doing another restart without holding shift key. Try putting mac to sleep.

This worked for me!

This is always due to a process keeping the system awake, but determining which is the challenge.

• A first simple step is to create a new, temporary user account. Log out of yours and log into the temporary one. Determine if it sleeps then. If it does then you have a login item that is preventing sleep. System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items.
• Whenever you suspect a problem related to power, including sleep, an SMC reset is also recommended.
• Active Spotlight indexing will prevent sleep. Wait for it to complete. Allow a considerable amount of time following an OS X upgrade.
• Check your Sharing preferences for anything that could permit an active network connection.
• Energy Saver "Wake for network access" can prevent sleep, but unchecking it will prevent the ability to remotely access a sleeping Mac over a network. A normally functioning Mac will sleep according to Energy Saver, but will wake periodically for network access, after which it will return to sleep according to the settings in Energy Saver.
• Unfinished print jobs will prevent sleep. If a print job is queued, but if the printer is off or the connection to it is lost, the Mac will stay awake forever waiting for the printer to return.
• Safari pages that periodically refresh themselves are very common. This will prevent sleep.
• Frequently checking for new mail may prevent sleep. Change Mail's preferences to check for new mail less frequently.
• iTunes and iPhoto sharing will prevent sleep.
• Active Bluetooth devices will prevent sleep.
• Active USB devices will prevent sleep.
• Using Time Machine over a network can prevent sleep.
• There are plenty of third party utilities designed to prevent sleep. One may not have been completely uninstalled.
• Quit the process with the name powerd in Activity Monitor. It will re-launch on its own.
• Any number of "anti-virus" utilities can prevent sleep, along with other miseries. Get rid of them.

Read Mac OS X: Why your Mac might not sleep or stay in sleep mode

Have checked all of the things suggested by John Galt, and still get the sleep the first time after a restart, but after than the machine will only sleep manually. But it will stay asleep when a manual sleep is initiated. But no power on earth will make the machine auto sleep after that first time. The SMC reset did resolve one other issue with Mavericks though. The extremely long wait (several minutes) between the bong and appearance of the Apple logo on the grey screen has been reduced to a couple of seconds.

This could either be a bug that comes up from time to time with OS X updates, or something you can fix.

• Open Terminal and Activity Monitor. Both are in your Utilities folder. Leave them open.
• Open System Preferences > Energy Saver, and set the Mac to sleep after the shortest possible idle time (one minute)
• Wait a minute, during which you touch nothing
• When it becomes obvious the Mac will not sleep, type the following in the Terminal window, followed by the Return key:

pmset -g

Look for the line resembling the following:

sleep 1 (sleep prevented by 360)

• Note the process ID (360 in the above example). Mavericks may indicate the process name directly.
• In Activity Monitor, select Window > Activity Monitor, and select the CPU tab. Click on the column with the heading "PID" to sort processes by their process ID. Find the Process Name corresponding to the PID above.

That will be the process that prevented sleep.

It says "Sleep prevented by usereventagent"

Unfortunately any number of processes may be responsible for that.

Using ⌘ - Tab, quit each running app individually, until you find the one keeping your Mac from sleeping. If you quit everything except the Finder and it still won't sleep, a third party system modification may be preventing it (third from last in my above list plus the "anti-virus" junk).

If you haven't a clue which one it may be, write back for more suggestions.

Been through that entire drill several times. Have quit all running apps, removed all startup items, gone down to bare bones, but they symptoms still persist. Began with the install of Mavericks and just won't go away. Have gotten into the habit of just doing a cmd-option-eject to sleep the system which works fine if I remember to do it. I know the problem is not widespread, and I am probably missing something. Wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be something in Adobe's Creative Clod software. That thing has stuff splattered all over the place and has been extremely buggy for me. Can't find anything that looks like it doesn't belong in the /System/UserEventPlugins folder though.