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Avoid Kernel Panics upon waking MacBook
Authored by: lekun on Jan 22, '09 08:24:42AM

As someone who has primarily used Apple laptops with lid closed operation for the past 8 years or so, I've seen it all.

There is no doubt that 10.5.6 does not handle waking from sleep as well as it should. Especially if you've put your MacBook to sleep while connected to an external display, disconnected all ports and then awakened your computer.

One fix, though, is a System reinstall (archive and install). Unfortunately, sometimes a system file gets corrupted when you sleep your computer. I believe this happens when you put your system to sleep, and it is writing the RAM contents to the disk (safe sleep) and you remove a USB device (say the keyboard you have plugged in). If you don't wait your computer to fully sleep, you can damage a system file (no, I don't know which one). This causes your computer to come out of sleep, but the system still thinks there is a monitor connected, and thus your screen is blank/off.

I know the computer is awake because I can press key combinations to evoke sleep and shutdown, but there is nothing I can do to make the screen come to life. I also have NOT painstakingly troubleshooted to determine which file is being corrupted or if the USB / Safe Sleep mode is truly to blame. I've always solved the issue with an Archive and Install (which always works) and haven't done the appropriate testing to isolate the cause. USB/Safe Sleep is just my hunch and seems to be the problem.

Kernel panics, however, are some other issue, and my guess is that your computer has a small hardware glitch, because I rarely (read: never) see Macs <em>consistently</em> kernel panic without their being a hardware cause.



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