(2009-04-27) Macbook Screen Not Waking Up

A problem started with my MacBook last week. When I open it up, even though I can faintly hear it running, the screen never comes up. Even if I close and re-open. No matter what keys I press. I finally have to hard-shut-down and re-boot with the power key. (The problem hasn't happened when it puts itself to sleep while left open.)

That first day the same thing happened a number of times. Then it didn't happen for a few days. Then it happened once yesterday. Then it happened just now.

That first day, I think I had been playing with getting Tiger Launch put into my startup items. After the hassles, I took it out (and upgraded it - though it hasn't been changed in years). Also, I think that the first time that day, when I re-launched FireFox (v3), it did an update-install: I often find FireFox's behavior hinky when it "wants" to upgrade.

I have no external hardware. I am always on WiFi. I haven't been doing anything with Blue Tooth (and the "wake up with Blue Tooth" option is turned off). I'm not moving the MacBook, it's just been sitting on the table. The machine is plugged in the whole time. I'm running MacOs X 10.5.5.

This thread mentions "istat pro" (I've never used it), and resetting the Power Management chip.

This page mentions so many things that it seems rather useless.

One workaround seems to be to enter command 'sudo pmset lidwake 0' so that you have to press a key to wake things up.

Some people turn on the "require password when waking up" preference, though others say this doesn't make the problem go away.

Some people think it was a recent System upgrade bug. But 10.5.6 doesn't seem to have eliminated the issue.

I just turned off File Sharing that was turned on in System Prefs.

Update: that didn't do any good. Just issued 'pmset' command.

Update: that didn't do any good either! When I pressed a key after opening, I saw a flash of screen, then it went black. Nothing would bring it back.

Apr28 update: things seem a bit better. I've stopped leaving so many FireFox windows/tabs open. Don't know whether that's the key...

Jun25 update: this has been happening again the last few days.

• The first couple times happened when I moved it from room to room right after closing, so maybe some spin-down issue.

• But it happened today when the laptop hadn't been moved.

  • But the screen had blanked before I closed it (which it's supposed to do). But maybe I'll try to remember to wake up the screen before closing the box for a bit. Ah, Cargo Cult mode...

• This batch of issues seemed to coincide with the ThunderBird 2.0.0.22 upgrade. That auto-upgrade failed a couple times, and I finally manually downloaded the new version to install it.

Jun28: ran all outstanding MacOs X system updates.