"Misbehaviour on Wake" problem with Apple laptops
Update
The specific problems described on this page occurred only during a particular time span (around March 2008). There can still be "misbehaviour on wake" problems with Apple laptops, but they won't have the causes described below if you have applied all the latest updates.
The page has been left to avoid broken links and for historic reasons.
The problem
- You have been using an external device (e.g. monitor, keyboard, or other USB, Bluetooth or Firewire device).
- On waking an Apple MacBook (or sometimes a PowerBook) from sleep, the screen remains black. The disk is still running and the machine is fully functioning, except for the screen. (For example, if you press F4/F5 to change the volume, you hear beeps.)
- An alternative (less common?) symptom is a mis-behaving trackpad on wake.
- You're running Leopard 10.5.2 after the Leopard Graphics Update 1.0.
It's very important to distinguish this problem from a number of other sleeping and waking problems, which are quite different. With this problem, the machine goes to sleep normally; the problem only happens on waking: the screen is totally black but everything else is working, or the trackpad misbehaves but everything else is ok.
The cause
The problem is caused by the Leopard Graphics Update 1.0. I'm sure of this because I spent four hours doing an "Archive and Install" back to Leopard 10.5.0 and then re-running updates via "Software Update...", excluding the Leopard Graphics Update 1.0, and the problem has disappeared.
I reported this bug to Apple and got the reply:
This is a follow up to Bug ID# 5802531. After further investigation it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering. This issue has been filed in our bug database under the original Bug ID# 5739988.
Getting out of the problem
If the "black screen on wake" occurs, the best way of resuming work seems to be as follows.
- Press the on/off button briefly (don't hold it down). Although you can't see it, this will bring up the "Are you sure you want to shut down your computer?" dialog.
- If you then press "s" this will activate sleep mode. Wait until the light is pulsing and then press any key to wake the machine up again. Sometimes this will fix the screen problem, but often it won't.
- If it doesn't fix it, again press the on/off button once, but then press return. This will initiate shut down. The only problem is that open applications may ask whether you want to save documents, but you can't see these requests. So if the shut down doesn't seem to be happening, press return a few more times until it does.
- When it finally shuts down, disconnect all external devices. Now restart your machine. Everything should be normal. Now read the section below.
Avoidance
If you have exactly this problem, then none of the suggested solutions on the web, other than going back to before the Leopard Graphics Update 1.0, appear to work (and believe me, I've tried quite a few!).
(There is an unofficial de-installer for the Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 available on the web, but I wouldn't advise trying it, given that there are successful work arounds. If you really want to get rid of the problem, run an Archive and Install and then update again excluding the Leopard Graphics Update 1.0. However, this takes a long while, and will lose any settings or other changes you've made which are stored in the System or Library folders.)
However, there are different causes of "misbehaviour on wake" (e.g. obsolete drivers left in place after upgrading using Migration Assistant), so the advice below refers only to the specific problem with the Leopard Graphics Update 1.0.
The following work arounds succeeded for me before I undid the update, and have been reported to work by other people.
- Never connect or disconnect any external device -- monitor, external keyboard or mouse (including Bluetooth), USB disk drive, etc. -- with the machine asleep.
- Never allow the machine to wake from sleep with the lid closed, e.g. by being woken by activity on an external keyboard, USB or Bluetooth device. To avoid this, disconnect all external devices and turn off Bluetooth before shutting the lid. (It's probably ok to leave Bluetooth on if you don't have "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer" turned on, but I can't test this as I don't have any such devices.)
- Some people found they also needed to turn off AirPort, although I didn't. If you have anything connected via AirPort which could change configuration or cause the machine to wake from sleep, this could certainly cause the problem.
The principle seems to be that the machine should never wake in a different configuration to the one in which it went to sleep. Any difference seems to confuse it.
An consequence of this is that you can't use your machine with an external monitor with the lid closed, because this involves waking with the lid closed. If you like working in this way, you'll have to keep the lid open and use F1 to turn off the laptop screen. Don't close the lid!
Further notes
I got a MacBook Pro because my PowerBook G4 developed a quite different problem (Google "mac os x narcolepsy" to find out about this one), so it was very annoying to hit the current problem. I've used Macs since 1985; I've never encountered such problems before. I've wasted several days on this problem, as have many other people. Let's hope it get's fixed soon...
Thanks to people in the Apple Discussions threads (there are several on wake/black screen problems) who gave useful advice/information.
Page created by Peter Coxhead, 19 Mar 2008; update 22 Dep 2008