March 2, 2005 12:50 AM PST

Mac OS X 10.3.8 Special Report: Wake from Sleep Issues

by CNET staff

There are a variety of issues that occur when attempting to wake some systems from sleep and are more frequent under Mac OS X 10.3.8.

The most common symptoms include a completely blank screen with an unresponsive system, problems with keyboards and mice (or trackpads) not responding, altered display color profiles -- all after waking from sleep.

Other less reported issues include inability to maintain an AirPort wireless connection through a sleep session

MacFixIt reader Ted writes:

"The interesting thing about this freeze is that it occurs most often when I close the lid and then pull out the Microsoft IntelliMouse from the computer's USB port causing the computer to attempt to wake when the lid is closed. [...] This freeze occurs at other times, but is almost 100% reproducible if I pull out the USB connection when the lid is closed."

Brian adds:

"Sporadic problem where the computer won't wake from sleep from the keyboard or mouse if the amount of time the computer has been asleep is quite long, say two or more hours. I need to wake the computer by pushing the power switch on the computer. This usually wakes the computer from sleep. Once I had to turn off the computer and restart as nothing would wake it from sleep."

Some readers are able to workaround this issue by not disconnecting the power adapters for their portable Macs while the units are asleep.

Mike Smutko writes:

"Every time that I disconnect the AC adapter from the my 17 inch PB (1 GHz Rev A) while it is asleep the trackpad and keyboard will be non-functional when I wake up the PB. Everything else seems OK (i.e. the screen isn't black or garbled--it looks normal). An external mouse will still work, however, and I can connect to the PB remotely with ssh, so I know that the entire machine isn't hanging. Only a shutdown and then a startup will fix the problem (a "warm" restart doesn't fix it). This started after installing 10.3.8 last weekend and is 100% repeatable. Furthermore, I can sleep and wake the computer successfully as many times as I want as long as I don't connect or disconnect the AC adapter while it's asleep. If I disconnect the AC adapter when the machine is awake, I don't have the problem. And I've never had this issue before 10.3.8."

Based on the above reports, a few basic tips for avoiding some of these problems emerge:

Do not disconnect power from your laptop while it is sleeping.
Use Apple's Hardware Test CD to perform a diagnostic check on your system. If any memory is found to be faulty, remove or replace it and check for persistence of the wake-from-sleep issues.
Try putting your system back to sleep (closing the lid if it is a portable, using the power button on some desktops) and re-awakening it

For more potential workarounds, see our special report on this issue

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