I’m having some odd issues with my G5 that I’m having trouble pinning down. I’ve just tossed a plea for help out in an Apple Discussions thread, but I wanted to put it up here also in case anyone else out there has seen similar behavior.
I’ve been having an odd issue (actually, two, but they may be related) with my G5 (Dual 2.0Ghz) that I haven’t seen anyone else mention, so I thought I’d toss it out here. Unfortunately, I’m having trouble narrowing down exactly what’s going on, so this may be a tad vague.
Issue 1: My G5 appears to be an insomniac. If I leave the computer alone, it never seems to go to sleep. The screensaver will kick in, but after a while at some (apparently) random time, the screensaver kicks off as if I’d just bumped the mouse. Because of this, the machine will only go into Sleep mode if I tell it to via the Apple menu.
Issue 2 (this is the one I’m having more problems diagnosing): At some point, I lose the ability to choose some of the commands in the Apple menu: ‘About This Mac’, ‘Force Quit…’, ‘Restart…’, ‘Shut Down…’, and ‘Log Out [username]…’ are all non-responsive. All other commands in the Apple Menu work fine. Most of the time this isn’t a major issue, but when a time comes when I do need to restart the computer (for instance, after installing a Software Update), the only way I can do it is to execute a ‘sudo shutdown -r now’ through the Terminal.
I’ve tried choosing ‘Log Out…’ occasionally after a restart to pin down when the menu commands stop responding, but am having difficulties determining just what the cause is. So far, it hasn’t seemed to be related to any particular application or sequence of events.
I have noticed that it appears to happen sometime after letting the computer go through its bout of insomnia for a while. In other words, if after restarting the machine I manually tell it to Sleep, then when I wake the computer up again, I can still access all Apple Menu commands without a problem. However, if I leave the computer alone and it fails to sleep automatically as it should, at some point after that I lose the Apple Menu functionality.
Unfortunately, at this point, I can’t get any more specific than that.
Has anyone else out there seen behavior like this, or am I alone with this particular glitch?
You didn’t mention which version of Mac OS X you are running. There is a file you can try and delete. The location depends on 10.2.x or 10.3. Under 10.3 delete the file /Library/Preferences/SystemCofiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist. with 10.2.x it is in /var/db/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.PowerManagement.plist. After deleting the file, I would restart and then change the settings again. You can get rid of all of the files and they will be recreated, but may not be needed. Also when I say delete, I really mean save for later re-use.
Zapping the PRAM is still not a bad call with OS X. Much less needed, but still an option.
Zapping The PRAM would be a great name for a rock band.
Thanks for the suggestion, Rob. I’ve just renamed that .plist file (I’m running 10.3.1, btw) and restarted. I’ll see how things go from here…hopefully that was all it took.
That doesn’t seem to have done it. Again, just after the restart I could logout/shutdown/restart without a problem, but now, those menu items are unresponsive. Thanks for the thought, though.
From Apple’s discussion area (Topic: Sleepless Panther): Setting Apple mail to check every 30 min and setting sleep for 15 min my Mac now goes into deep sleep. Before, Mail was set to check every min. So I guess that was keeping my mac out of deep sleep, just sleeping the monitors. Hope this helps someone.
That still doesn’t help with issue 2 really (if it helps with issue 1). For issue 2, when you try a restart after a software update, does the machine just hang? When the items are ghosted, can you still use the keyboard to get to the commands (Control-Eject)? How about launch either Activity viewer or Terminal (using top -u) to view the CPU usage? It may tell you something. You should be able to force a log out in the Terminal by finding the WindowServer process and killing it as well (not a fix, but something to try to see where it is broken.
A big help is create a new account and see if it happens with that account. That would rule out items in you home directory. You don’t have access to a lot of files, but it would rule out 1/3 of the possible areas (Home area, all users, System).
Have fun. May be easier to wait for an update to 10.3.2 and see if that fixes it.
Nope. I get no hangs, freezes, crashes, or anything else along those lines. Everything appears to be normal aside from these issues.
I should have been more clear on this. The items in the Apple menu that don’t work aren’t disabled/ghosted — they are available in the menu, and can be chosen normally — they just don’t do anything.
I’ve tried that, and there doesn’t seem to be anything obviously taking up unusually large amounts of processor time/memory usage.
I should have thought of that earlier. I just switched into another account that I have set up for things like that (it’s had nothing done to it aside from being created), and the Apple menu behaves normally there. So, it’s obviously something specific to my normal user account.
That narrows it down, at least…time to go bug hunting.
Hey, now you are down to an easy task at least. You may want to look at things in your ~/Library/Services as well as anything that is adding to your menu bar at startup. After that I would hit the preferences. If you are like me you have a ton that were from launching an app once and deciding it was not worth your time. At the very least you will be able to clean up your Preferences folder some.