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After installing mavericks, the iMac will not wake from sleep properly (at all)

I've upgraded to 10.9 (late 2012 21" iMac), and I notice in the morning when the iMac has been sleeping overnight, it will not wake up,

During the day, if it sleeps for a few hours, it seems fine, and wakes normally, prompting me to type my password,

In the morning however, I hit a key (on my wireless keyboard), and the display wakes up, I get a dark grey screen, and see the loading circle (not the beachball) in the middle, and see the cursor for a few seconds, before it then disappears, and reappears.

This cycle repeats itself,

The 'fix' is to do a forced shutdown by holding the powwer button until it shuts down, and then restart.


Anyone else find this problem/find a solution?

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on Oct 28, 2013 2:44 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 28, 2013 11:06 PM

Please read this whole message before doing anything.

This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it.
The purpose of the test is to determine whether the problem is caused by third-party software that loads automatically at startup or login, by a peripheral device, or by corruption of certain system caches.


Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode and log in to the account with the problem. Note: If FileVault is enabled on some models, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Ask for further instructions.

Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including sound output and Wi-Fi on certain models. The next normal boot may also be somewhat slow.
The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.


Test while in safe mode. Same problem?


After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.
210 replies

Feb 8, 2014 7:40 AM in response to AW1960

AW1960 Avira is junk that will burden your Mac with a multitude of processes. Its UI is poor and as you observed its "progress bar" is purely ornamental. Those are not encouraging indications of a program developed in accordance with Apple's developer guidelines.


Avira will report false positives and is capable of nothing beneficial. It may or may not be the direct cause of the sleeping problems you described, but your Mac will not function properly with it installed. Get rid of it.

Feb 8, 2014 8:49 PM in response to John Galt

🙂 It did indeed. I uninstalled AVIRA earlier this morning and the iMac appears to be running sweetly now:


  • it wakes from sleep immediately (on entry of a password)
  • no more hanging during file operations
  • Time Machine backups that were taking several hours are now running in less than 60 seconds every hour or so.


Just amazing the difference.


Sad in a way - I'd had good experiences with the Windows version of AVIRA on my son's PC - it successfully eliminated a Trojan on his computer but our ISP wouldn't reinstate our network connection until all computers had antivirus software installed and reported clear scans.


The wake up problems weren't evident with AVIRA installed under OS-X versions pre-Mavericks but looking back, I did notice that the Time Machine backups were very slow, which I just put down to Time Machine being slow to do its thing. Now I know it isn't at all from the way its been performing today. The AVIRA problem has been there, obviously, since the software was instelled and its impacts have become more severe with changes to OS-X.


Thanks!

Feb 11, 2014 6:15 AM in response to AW1960

Thanks for the update AW1960.


You would not have had to wait six weeks to solve this problem if you had started a new Discussion to begin with. If fearull's problems remain unresolved he ought to do that becase this one has degenerated into a distracting mess of irrelevance.


The vast majority of problems that may appear to be associated with Mavericks exist in the same proportion as every other OS X release, and "anti-virus" junk like Avira is a common cause.


Sad in a way -


Why? Avira may be perfectly fine for a PC for all I know but a Mac ≠ a PC.


Losing dependence on AV software is like losing a pair of crutches. You can't run well with crutches and neither can a Mac.

Feb 17, 2014 6:33 PM in response to AW1960

My mac mini has been back from the Genius Bar for 8 days.


They replaced the logic board again. 2nd replacement in a month.

They also replaced the cooling fan and a burnt/melted screw.


The first morning after it got back it would not wake from sleep. 4 other times throughout the day it would not wake from sleep. All after a clean install of Mavericks... again. 2nd time for a fresh install in 30 days period.


I wanted to reply to AW1960's post regarding AVIRA. I HAD it installed also, but that was prior to the two clean installs of Mavericks. 1st one was January 3, 2014. 2nd one was January 20 or so. I just got it back from the store on February 8, 2014. They were troubleshooting it for about 16 days.


I still had the wake from sleep problem with NO software installed except for Mavericks after the first visit to the store. I did not reinstall AVIRA and still had wake from sleep issues.


________________________________________________________________________________ ________


Since I have a 3 year old grand daughter who uses the mac while I'm at work for her educational games, I MUST have a computer that will wake from sleep. She is one reason for the Mac and the educational software benefits it has.


Sooo. I also have a 120 GB SSD that I got for Christmas and still had not installed because I was trying to resolve the wake from sleep issue first.


Here's my temporary solution to the problem.


I installed the new SSD. When I did, I installed OS X 10.8.5 from scratch via the internet. I have now reinstalled all of my apps EXCEPT AVIRA, which will never again be installed on this Mac! That includes MS Office 2011, FINALE (music writing program), several games (Angry Birds and company, several hidden object games), quite a few educational games for my 3 year old grand daughter, and a greaty little app called Loginox which allows you to change your logon screen.


I have been running Mountain Lion (10.8.5) for 9 days with ZERO failed wake from sleep atrempts! I still don't have the nerve or desire to retry Mavericks with the solid state drive. My computer is back to normal, actually way faster with the Samsung SSD 840 EVO 120GB.


Next step is to reinstall my 1 TB drive.

Feb 18, 2014 5:34 AM in response to fearull

All,


I also am affected by this problem. In my case, I have a Mac Pro (3,1) Early 2008 with 27” Apple display.


System is not allowed to go to sleep, but I normally put just the display to sleep if I am running a Matlab simulation that will take some time to complete.


The symptoms are when the display is at sleep in the morning, I cannot get it to wake up. I just get a gray screen but the machine seems to be working away in the background by the noise its making but nothing happens with the gray screen.

Feb 18, 2014 1:53 PM in response to SeiFy

SeiFy's post is interesting. There are, and have been a variety of problems that manifest to the user as a failure to wake. Posts citing that symptom go way back. But this particular thread identifies a correlation with installation of Mavericks, as well as appearance on desktop systems (it appears looking back that laptops may have tended to have more wake problems - there are differences in the way things work for them so that is a useful distinction when reding everyone's posts in this thread and in others)


SeiFy's report is the purest test yet pointing directly at something relating to Mavericks. It eliminates a lot of the potential issues - applications, peripherals including additional displays, etc. A very good test.

Feb 18, 2014 2:05 PM in response to BobHassinger

I think we can be more specific than this. For me, under 10.9, there was no problem. It was only when updating to 10.9.1 that this issue arose. Hopefully, someone is reading these posts and that 10.9.2 will cure the problem although Apple may not announced they have fixed the problem if they dont recognise its existence. Hopefully no more 10.9.2 beta's - seven in a row is a bit too much when we are waiting for various fixes! Apple used to be good with supplemental updates to fix a vexing problem - perhaps they should go back to that system?

Feb 18, 2014 2:06 PM in response to F150Terp

F150Terp - those symptoms are exactly consistent with what I have observed, including the overnight and the dark screen, beginning when I updated to Mavericks.


My study of my logs suggests something goes wrong when the system tries to wake up the displays - it looks like during sleep the system swaps out the display buffers holding what the user has been viewing. On wake it looks like the system more or less swaps that back information back into the display buffers, but there is something going wrong with that process so the display contents are not restored. My logs seem to be saying there are problems with the internal IDs it uses for the display buffer contents.


I suspect you might be able to use the keyboard or other I/O devices and they would work. It seems that at least a lot of the time the only real problem is that we can't see the screen because the system has messed up its handling of its content.

Feb 18, 2014 2:18 PM in response to foulgernz

foulgernz, my case definitely started with 10.9.0. I installed it on Oct 25th. Within a few days I started to realize there was a pattern of this problem. I called AppleCare on Nov 14th about it and got the stock responses that did not help. I installed 10.9.1 on Dec 18th in hopes there would be a fix but no luck.


There appears to be some sort of a subtle conflict or combination of factors that only surfaces for a limited number of us. I have seen no indication Apple has recognized a defined problem that needs to be fixed.

Feb 19, 2014 4:01 AM in response to fearull

BobHassinger you are totaly right, when the problem arise, the IO's are still working. The kernel runs, various services run in background.


Only the graphic engine is messed up. I can SSH into the machine, and sometimes a kill -HUP of the WindowServer process restarts the graphic engine and brings me back to the login screen.


This is far less worse for the filesystems than forcing the machine to reboot by pressing the power button for 5sec or so.


The Beta asked the developpers to have a look at the video drivers, who knows, this is probably a video driver problem (again... sigh...).

Feb 20, 2014 4:24 AM in response to BobHassinger

I agreeBobHassinger you are totally rightand this problem is common and repeatable. I truly believe that this is a software issue, a bug with Mavericks or graphics card driver issue. Today, I started running an Apple Hardware test on my Mac Pro (3,1) since this will take several hours I am running it while I am at work in hopes of removing any doubts related to a hardware issue, e.g. memory. Memory can sometimes cause some strange things so I want to rule that out. I hope that the next update to Mavericks will correct this issue, time will tell.

After installing mavericks, the iMac will not wake from sleep properly (at all)

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