MacBook Pro Will Not Sleep with Lid Open

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i wrote this in response to a thread on apple's discussion site, but they removed it because it contained "feedback and feature requests". very strange, but i wanted to get my story out there because i've been struggling with solving this problem with apple for over 2 years. now i think i've discovered the source of the issue, so i hope mac-forums will be ok with me sharing my story.

ORIGINAL POSTING:

it's funny, every time i've called support, pram and smc always seem to be the first line of defense. i tried all that, but in 2 years i've owned my MBP, it has NEVER slept. couldn't figure out why. support helped me look into a few things:

first boot up in Safe Mode (hold Shift and Power button, and let go of Shift when you see the Apple)
turn your Sleep settings to 1 min to test out whether you can actually get the light to blink, which indicates on my MBP that it is indeed sleeping

if your mac will sleep in Safe mode, then you've proved that it has the ability to sleep, and most likely there is an issue with a 3rd party app installed on the computer. otherwise, bring it in...

so in my case, all signs pointed to 3rd party app. further research showed me what was apps to look out for on bootup:

check Mac HD > Library > StartupItems
check System Prefs > Accounts > Login Items

both of these contain all the programs that your mac wants to startup on bootup. i found 5 programs: Skype, Entourage programs - Microsoft Database Daemon and My Day, Speech??? (a native MacOS program), and Sophos Antivirus.

after removing all of these programs from Login Items, i still had the issue. went to Activity Monitor to find that all the Sophos processes were still running under the ROOT user despite the fact that i removed above references AND set Sophos prefs to not run at startup.

i uninstalled Sophos with a special unsinstaller (right there, a bad sign when a vendor doesn't provide an uninstaller with their program), rebooted a couple times due to an update coming through, and VOILA! my computer finally sleeps for the first time in the 2 years i've owned this computer!

i've brought the laptop into Apple multiple times and they have never been able to find the source of the problem, but a reinstall of the whole OS wiping out all my data, had fixed the issue for a week only, prior to installing the 3rd party apps i normally need like Skype, Microsoft Office, and what i thought would be a wise thing to install - Sophos Antivirus.

now all this may change tomorrow, because technology is a complicated beast. but i feel that i've used sound deductive reasoning to come to the conclusion that Sophos is not to be trusted.

i hope someone from Apple or Sophos sees this so they can actually work on a resolution, because i know that my MBP has taken on a **** of a lot more mileage than it should have from all those sleepless nights...
 
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Your Mac's Specs
MacBook Pro | LED Cinema Display | iPhone 4 | iPad 2

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