Cannot disable hibernate mode in iMAC High Sierra

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Level 1

8 points

Cannot disable hibernate mode in iMAC High Sierra

I have an iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Mid 2015) running High Sierra 10.13.4 (17E199).

I can't disable Hibernation no matter what I try. I want to disable hibernate mode because it's taking it > 5 minutes to restore itself from hibernate. That's a long time to wait when I come into work every morning.

Here is a list of things that I have tried so far. Keep in mind that this is not necessarily what I want, but I am trying everything at this point to try to disable hibernation (e.g. I don't actually want the screen to remain on forever).

I set screen display to never turn off. I disabled putting disks to sleep.

I did not have anything scheduled. So I even tried to have it wake up at 9am so that I didn't have to wait more than 5 minutes when I came into work. Incidentally, this doesn't work either.

I have also tried working with pmset settings but nothing seems to be working for me.

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0 standby 0 autopoweroff 0

This is what my current pmset settings look like:

$ pmset -g

System-wide power settings:

Currently in use:

standby 0

Sleep On Power Button 1

womp 1

halfdim 1

hibernatefile /var/vm/sleepimage

powernap 1

gpuswitch 2

autorestart 0

networkoversleep 0

disksleep 0

sleep 0 (sleep prevented by iTunes, coreaudiod)

autopoweroffdelay 28800

hibernatemode 0

autopoweroff 0

ttyskeepawake 1

displaysleep 0

standbydelay 28800

Has anyone else faced this problem and found a solution? I have found a few posts on the internet and no one seems to have solved this problem recently. It looks like a bug.

Corrected this sentence: Has anyone else faced this problem and found a solution? Message was edited by: dran00

Posted on May 2, 2018 12:03 PM

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Answer 1

iCare

Level 4

2,490 points

May 3, 2018 7:37 PM in response to dran00

That is very odd behavior that is nothing like anything I've ever encountered on an iMac.

If it were my iMac I would probably do one or more of the following.

1) Reset NVRAM and SMC. It likely won't do anything to change the symptom, but on the off chance that it does, give it a try.

2) If I had sufficient space on my drive I would make sure I had a backup, then create a new partition and install a fresh copy of the macOS on the new partition using the recovery mode. If the issue goes away when booting from the new partition then at least I know it's software related.

3) Reinstall macOS on my original partition using macOS Recovery mode.

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Answer 2

iCare

Level 4

2,490 points

May 2, 2018 2:09 PM in response to dran00

I'm running the same OS build/version on my 2017 72-inch iMac and have never had it hibernate. My settings seem to be identical to yours though. Is it possible that your iMac is losing power during the middle of the night, even if only intermittently? If you don't have the 'Start up automatically after a power failure' option checked in the Energy Saver preferences then I suggest enabling it to see if it makes a difference. If it starts working normally then that would be an indication that your iMac is powering down during the night and then restores from the disk image in the morning when you return and 'wake' the iMac.

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Answer 3

dran00 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 21, 2018 4:41 PM in response to dran00

A fresh install on a separate partition and it finally works as it should. The standby mode is disabled and the computer sleeps instead of going into hibernate mode. I can start working where I left off after walking away for 30 minutes.

So the mystery was never solved, other than to say that it was some OS bug. I even considered selling my iMac and getting a Linux desktop instead. So frustrating!

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Answer 4

dran00 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 17, 2018 5:47 PM in response to dran00

SMC reset failed to fix the problem as well. I tried re-installing the OS on top of the existing installation us recovery mode but that failed to fix the problem too.

I will have to do a fresh install, maybe on a secondary partition like was suggested earlier and see if that solves the problem.

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Answer 5

dran00 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 8, 2018 12:14 PM in response to dran00

The NVRAM step failed. I will try the SMC reset next. If that fails, I will try to do a reinstall.

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Answer 6

dran00 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 3, 2018 1:58 PM in response to iCare

No, it's definitely not losing power in the middle of the night. In fact, I just came back to my desk after going away for 45 minutes on those settings and had to wait 5+ minutes while my machine recovered from hibernate.

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Answer 7

dran00 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 3, 2018 7:39 PM in response to iCare

Thanks, I will try the NVRAM step in the morning to see if that helps. The new partition idea is helpful; I will try that to try to isolate the root cause.

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Cannot disable hibernate mode in iMAC High Sierra

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