No response from Mac after going to sleep

I closed my MacBook last night and assumed it went into sleep mode, but now there is no response from it. I have tried every button code I know (i.e cmd-tab, cmd-alt-esc, F2 etc) but nothing works. The little light on the front that usually pulses when the Mac is 'sleeping' is consistent rather than pulsing, but the apple on top of the lid is dark (naturally, because the screen is also dark/black). I have also tried to tap the on/off button, but I don't want to turn it off or reboot it. I have a program running that, if I shut it down, it will take ages to get to where it is now. Does anyone know anything I can try that doesn't involve rebooting the Mac?

try double tap the space bar

and if your MB is asleep, the program has already stopped running - everything stops when the machine goes to sleep

If it's really not responding, try taking the power off (AC) and removing the battery then replacing it and reconnecting power. That works on most laptops.

Problem solved

bobtomay: I put the program on pause like I had done many times before,
the problem was shutting the entire application down...

brianwmay: I eventually gave up and rebooted the mac, but I really wanted
to avoid doing that.

Thanks!

Ok I have been have this same intermittent problem now for 2 weeks ! I have been searching for a clue as to what causes it so I could fix it but I can find no pattern. I just had it happen again after a week with no problem.

It has happened when putting the system to sleep with screen/keyboard/power bottom all with and with out any open apps . And the only why to wake it up is with hard boot with power

I am open to any and all

Thanx in advance
Clay
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I've had this problem too.... I close the lid and go to sleep myself for the night and the next morning...

The first thing I notice even before I come near my MacBook is that the little light isn't blinking, it's just on...

I open the lid and the screen stays black, the little light stays on and nothing I do gets any response.

Only thing I can do is hold down the power button and restart...

Anyone have any ideas?

If the light is still lit steady, it should mean that the machine is still in the stage of going to sleep. It has not made it all the way into sleep mode.

Probably some app or process that refuses to stop. I had a similar issue. After much troubleshooting, mine ended up being Mail. And the issue was an add-on I had installed and uninstalled called httpmail that allows you to access your hotmail in Mail. I had used it's uninstall routine, but it still left a couple of files behind that were causing Mail to almost continuously try to connect to nothing. Once I googled uninstall httpmail and found out about deleting these two files also, problem resolved itself.

I give you the above to show how hard it is to troubleshoot something like this via long distance. These type of things you'll typically have to troubleshoot yourself to see if you can figure it out.

Try taking note of which apps you have only closed instead of quitting, and are still running when you shut the lid. Try quitting all apps prior to shutting the lid, does it still occur? Do you have one app that doesn't seem to want to quit without doing a force quit? In this way, you may be able to narrow down the process at fault. Open up Activity Monitor prior to putting it to sleep to check for what's currently using CPU cycles. It can be quite a time consuming ordeal to go through.

bobtomay- Thanx for the advice. It is just the info I was looking for . I ll start your process now and let you know the out come.

Clay

I ran into this issue recently as well. I noticed that it had started to crop up after I installed iStat menus. Removed that and now it's fine again.

But I've also seen it happen with other apps / devices connected, so you might just want to remove anything you've added since this issue started.

Hmm.. This did once happen when I had both Mail and Safari still running...

But it happened again this morning and I clearly remember quitting all running apps before shutting the lid.

I've also had this happen both with and without peripherals plugged into the USB port.

OkI was half way thru a list of changes I had made before and after this problem started and wouldnt you know it I think the last thing I did was download and install iSat ! However it is such an intermittent problem I dont understand how it could be that easy of a fix so ill wait for it to happen again and then uninstall iSat and see what happens

Thanx Aptmunich

update...unstalled iSat 5 days ago and no problems since .
Thanx to Aptmunich

Clay