MacBook won't sleep--is Parallels responsible?

I have this happen when all applications are closed, no VMs are running.

 

I have had a similar problem, but with waking from sleep. It goes to sleep and won't wake up without powering down. Sometimes I could get it to wake up with 5-10 minutes of "messing around" -- hitting keys, ejecting and mounting a CD, fondling the trackpad -- so maybe it is a not-being-patient-enough problem. I have noticed the association with Office 2004 apps and parallels running together. But mostly what I have seen is that since I put an second 1GB in the 2nd slot (not disturbing the original apple 1GB of memory) the problem has almost entirely disappeared.

I tend to run a ridiculous amount of stuff all at the same time -- I really USE my computers, and my history is with vms and unix where virtual memory works correctly so I tend to expect that if I use more memory than I physically have that it should just work (if more slowly). (I was a VMS system manager long ago, and so have passed the exam on Anatomy of a Page Fault...)

 

cathyf, I think that is a very different problem. I've had problems waking from sleep occassionally, usually I can get past it by opening the lid, hitting the power button, then hitting 's' on the keyboard, then closing the lid, waiting for it to go to sleep, and opening it again. It's a bit annoying but not as bad as the machine not going to sleep at all.

 

This happened again to me today. My MacBook wouldn't sleep, shutdown, or restart. But I got a message that it couldn't shut down because Mirror Agent was still running.

 

Hello again.

Please look at this thread:
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=3040&highlight=mac+sleeps

Also please do the following:

When in Windows right click Desktop and select Properties, go to Screen Saver tab, click the Power button, and in Power schemes set Portable /Laptop and adjust the parameters below to be less then in your MacOSX settings, and check that none of them is set to "Never".

 

Hi Archy, thanks for weighing in on this. It's frustrating. I have set my XP power management settings to be less than my Mac settings and will let you know what happens. It seems worthwhile to note that I have this problem even when Parallels is not running, so I'm not quite sure how the Windows settings could be a factor.

 

Uninstalling Parallels fixed problem for me

Indeed, uninstalling Parallels fixed the sleep problem for me.

I was suffering from the problem since upgrading from the Core Duo to the Core 2 MacBook Pro last December. Normally I'm using the MBP with two 23" Cinema Displays, one at home, one in the lab, so I do not open the MBP normally. In this mode I could always go to sleep without problems. However, for meetings I had to use the MBP without attached display. At the end of the meeting I was never able to put the MBP to sleep (or to shut it down or restart it). I could only do a forced shutdown. Please note: Parallels was never active when this happened.

I tried everything to isolate the problem (including 2 fresh installs of Mac OS X), but I never waited long enough before reinstalling Parallels.

After finding this thread two days ago, I immediately uninstalled Parallels (with its uninstaller), and since then the problem is gone for me.

So now I'll always have to remember to uninstall Parallels when going to a meeting
(No, I've switched to VMWare which does not have the sleep problem).

 

Sounds as though there's a problem with Parallels? I might hold off installing it until this issue is addressed.

 

After trying everything else I could think of, I did an archive and install today. I don't need Parallels much, so I didn't reinstall it. If my machine can go for a few weeks without any problems, I'll reinstall Parallels. If the problem returns, I'll know if Parallels is responsible.

Look for a report in a few weeks.

Chris

 

One week without Parallels...no sleep/wake problems so far.

 

It's now been two weeks without any problems. I'm going to reinstall Parallels and see what happens...

 

Update: I reinstalled Parallels yesterday, and today I had the no sleep problem again. I think I can say with certainty that it's definitely Parallels.

Furthermore, I ran "sudo /Library/StartupItems/Parallels/Parallels stop" so the only kext I had loaded at the time was "/Library/StartupItems/Parallels/Pvsvnic.kext". Perhaps this particular kext is the culprit.

I have unloaded it as well, and now I'll see if the problem appears again.

Chris

 

Another update. I've been running with the kexts unloaded now for 3 days and haven't had any problems. I'm convinced this is a Parallels kext problem.

 

I have had an entirely different sleep issue for a few months now, and Apple support now wants me to try running without Parallels installed to see if this is a similar issue -

On my MacBook Pro, I usually put the machine to sleep several times a day by simply closing the lid. Every few days it seems, I will close the lid and instead of going to sleep, the machine performs a reboot. There is nothing in the system logs that suggest what went wrong, we go straight to a reboot as if the machine were just suddenly turned on. I found this thread while searching for similar issues to mine and discovered this thread. I'm guessing I should start by unloading the kexts as you mentioned, or perhaps a complete uninstall?

I'll be watching this thread now for updates, and post my own results on this.

 

After unloading the Parallels startup items, I did not notice any more reboots on sleep.
Shortly after, Parallels 3 was released and I decided to give it a try. Now instead of rebooting on sleep, the MacBook Pro consistantly has trouble waking up when I open the lid. It seems to try to start up, but I never get anything but a black screen. After a minute or so, it goes back to sleep mode while the screen is still open, and then I can press the power button to wake it. All this from only the startup items, I dont even have to actually run Parallels to get this behavior.

how very frustrating!!

 

chabig: thanks for your reports - please post back if you think "/Library/StartupItems/Parallels/Pvsvnic.kext" is the problem. Maybe Parallels will pay attention to this and respond with a fix. It is a very frustrating problem.

 

This happened three times last week and I can't take it anymore. Its not just that I can't sleep the machine but I can't print to any network printers through the Mac side either when it gets in this state. (I haven't tried through a local printer)

I uninstalled Parallels and am trying out VMWare Fusion. You can only take a single snapshot in Fusion - I hope they change this in the final release. I like the new snapshot manager in Parallels 3.0 better but oh well. If I don't have any stability issues with VMWare Fusion, I'm going to switch permanently.

 

So I officially apologize to Parallels. I've had this issue recurr a couple times since I removed Parallels and have been running VMWare Fustion. I'm inclined to believe that it is not related directly to Parallels or VMWare Fusion...

I can fix the printing issue by restarting the CUPS daemon, but I still can't sleep (or shutdown) the machine. I have taken this to Apple forums to seek advice or to find others with similar problems.

 

A really dumb question (I hope) but after booting from the ISO CD, how do I get back to OS X? I now have the CD in the drive and no way to remove it .. and reboot is from the CD.

Phil

 

Hold the option key during boot and select the volume.

I guess I should have added that my problem is not bad memory. My memtest runs successfully, no errors.