Won't wake up from sleep ("comatose Mac"), the Odyssey; possible progress
Folks:
iMac First Gen 17-inch G5 1.6GHz , USB keyboard and mouse, stock (Apple) RAM, MacOS10.3x --> 10.4 fully updated
My G5 suddenly stopped waking up from sleep. Just to be certain: I mean "sleep" as the condition achieved by Apple Menu-->Sleep or Control Panels-->Energy Saver after the preset time elapses. In this state, the machine is dark and quiet except for the throbbing white light on the lower right. Agreed?
Up until last week, the machine would ALWAYS wake up successfully from sleep in a few seconds on mouse movement or key-press. Now, wake-up from keyboard or mouse fails most of the time, not always, but seemingly more often the longer the machine has been asleep.
All that happens now when I try to wake it with the keyboard or mouse is the throbbing white indicator lamp goes dark. There is sometimes briefly the suggestion of a rotational noise, not clear if it is disk or fan. The machine stays quiescent except for a slight hum. Holding down the power button has NO EFFECT in this state, at least not in the up to 30-40 seconds I've held it down before giving up. Maybe we should call this "comatose Mac" state?
The ONLY recovery is to remove power from the machine, e.g. by pulling the AC power plug. I wait 10 - 20 seconds, re-apply power, and use the power button to boot. Boot is always <sigh-of-relief> normal.
I've read lots of traffic on Apple Support Discussions and other forums about what appears to be the same problem, and I believe I've attempted all solutions and diagnostic procedures offered and one --upgrading the OS-- that wasn't:
--reseting NVRAM and PRAM, separately and together
--repairing permissions
--trashing the power management preferences file, com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
--checking the hard disk
--upgrading from 10.3.x to 10.4.x (which I wanted to do for other reasons)
--reseting the System Management Unit (SMU)
--creating a new user for test purposes
--disabling the screen saver
--logging out before enter sleep
--changed Energy Saver to not put the display or hard drive to sleep separately
--removing all non-essential USB connections, all but keyboard and mouse.
None had any effect or provided any further clues. Yes, of course, it is possible to work around this problem by preventing the system from going to sleep or by shutting down whenever it isn't going to be used for a while. Neither of these is acceptable beyond the short term.
It's a bit disturbing that discussions of similar problems go back as far as 2005, at least, on Apple and other discussion boards with no definitive solution and a lot of flailing around, people suggesting improbably broad solutions like erasing the hard drive and re-installing the OS, or specific but seemingly superstitious ones, like adding system RAM. No way I can prove it, but I have a feeling the comatose state sets in before the processor itself starts executing code, so it seems quite unlikely that many of the measures described above could have any effect at all.
Another possible red herring: I've seen multiple referrals to the G5 iMac Repair Extension program, people saying that this will solve wake-up problems --and my G5 is in one of the affected serial number groups-- but the official write-up ( http://www.apple.com/support/imac/powersupply/repairextensionprogram/) seems clear that the program is intended to fix a different set of issues. I guess I'll have to spend the time to find out directly from Apple.
Finally, here is some possible progress: I read somewhere that briefly pressing the power button is an alternative way of waking up iMacs, so I experimented. For the past several days, this method has worked ALMOST ALWAYS --the one failure may be a fluke-- while keyboard or mouse wake-up continues to fail most of the time. Using the power button is not an ideal solution --it is hard to retrain one's self to avoid the keyboard and mouse for waking up a particular Mac! It's also not near as convenient.
I hope this works for other people. If confirmed, this result would seem to offer the prospect of isolating the problem to a very small portion of the system. I hope so.
Thanks,
Henry
iMac First Gen 17-inch G5 1.6GHz , USB keyboard and mouse, stock (Apple) RAM, MacOS10.3x --> 10.4 fully updated
My G5 suddenly stopped waking up from sleep. Just to be certain: I mean "sleep" as the condition achieved by Apple Menu-->Sleep or Control Panels-->Energy Saver after the preset time elapses. In this state, the machine is dark and quiet except for the throbbing white light on the lower right. Agreed?
Up until last week, the machine would ALWAYS wake up successfully from sleep in a few seconds on mouse movement or key-press. Now, wake-up from keyboard or mouse fails most of the time, not always, but seemingly more often the longer the machine has been asleep.
All that happens now when I try to wake it with the keyboard or mouse is the throbbing white indicator lamp goes dark. There is sometimes briefly the suggestion of a rotational noise, not clear if it is disk or fan. The machine stays quiescent except for a slight hum. Holding down the power button has NO EFFECT in this state, at least not in the up to 30-40 seconds I've held it down before giving up. Maybe we should call this "comatose Mac" state?
The ONLY recovery is to remove power from the machine, e.g. by pulling the AC power plug. I wait 10 - 20 seconds, re-apply power, and use the power button to boot. Boot is always <sigh-of-relief> normal.
I've read lots of traffic on Apple Support Discussions and other forums about what appears to be the same problem, and I believe I've attempted all solutions and diagnostic procedures offered and one --upgrading the OS-- that wasn't:
--reseting NVRAM and PRAM, separately and together
--repairing permissions
--trashing the power management preferences file, com.apple.PowerManagement.plist
--checking the hard disk
--upgrading from 10.3.x to 10.4.x (which I wanted to do for other reasons)
--reseting the System Management Unit (SMU)
--creating a new user for test purposes
--disabling the screen saver
--logging out before enter sleep
--changed Energy Saver to not put the display or hard drive to sleep separately
--removing all non-essential USB connections, all but keyboard and mouse.
None had any effect or provided any further clues. Yes, of course, it is possible to work around this problem by preventing the system from going to sleep or by shutting down whenever it isn't going to be used for a while. Neither of these is acceptable beyond the short term.
It's a bit disturbing that discussions of similar problems go back as far as 2005, at least, on Apple and other discussion boards with no definitive solution and a lot of flailing around, people suggesting improbably broad solutions like erasing the hard drive and re-installing the OS, or specific but seemingly superstitious ones, like adding system RAM. No way I can prove it, but I have a feeling the comatose state sets in before the processor itself starts executing code, so it seems quite unlikely that many of the measures described above could have any effect at all.
Another possible red herring: I've seen multiple referrals to the G5 iMac Repair Extension program, people saying that this will solve wake-up problems --and my G5 is in one of the affected serial number groups-- but the official write-up ( http://www.apple.com/support/imac/powersupply/repairextensionprogram/) seems clear that the program is intended to fix a different set of issues. I guess I'll have to spend the time to find out directly from Apple.
Finally, here is some possible progress: I read somewhere that briefly pressing the power button is an alternative way of waking up iMacs, so I experimented. For the past several days, this method has worked ALMOST ALWAYS --the one failure may be a fluke-- while keyboard or mouse wake-up continues to fail most of the time. Using the power button is not an ideal solution --it is hard to retrain one's self to avoid the keyboard and mouse for waking up a particular Mac! It's also not near as convenient.
I hope this works for other people. If confirmed, this result would seem to offer the prospect of isolating the problem to a very small portion of the system. I hope so.
Thanks,
Henry
First Gen 17-inch G5 1.6GHz, Mac OS X (10.4), USB keyboard and mouse, stock (Apple) RAM,
