Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

mainstreetmark

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 7, 2003
2,228
293
Saint Augustine, FL
A new, and serious, problem has developed with my trusty 1.33GHz PowerBook. It won't stay awake. Given my recent troubles with all my other hardware, I'm hoping the powerbook survives.

Anyways, I came home, took it out of my bag and opened it up, and it wouldn't wake up. No big deal. It's done that before. They all have. I held the power button down for a while so it would reboot. It did. 5 minutes after reboot, in the middle of me doing stuff, it went to sleep again, and wouldn't wake up. Rinse, repeat about 5 times.

I put in the Tiger DVD and tried to boot from it by using System Preferences (took me 3 more times to keep the computer awake long enough to set that)(and i can never remember which keys to hold down during boot). Performed a Repair Permissions and a Verify Disk with no bad news to report.

Well, it slept itself again, so I closed the lid and went to sleep, trying not to think about it.

This morning, it ran for, perhaps, an hour, and then slept. Then, another 20 minutes. Then, when I rebooted, the screen was filled with lots of small blocks until I shut it off.

Then I rebooted and came straight to this forum.

Ideas?
 

yellow

Moderator emeritus
Oct 21, 2003
16,018
6
Portland, OR
pull the battery, connect to power supply. Still doing it, or is it compeltely cutting out on you?

Also, you need to do a PMU (Power Management Unit) reset. You can find out how at Apple's Support site.
 

aquajet

macrumors 68020
Feb 12, 2005
2,386
10
VA
How to reset PMU on 1.33Ghz Al Powerbooks

From Apple support site:

1. If the computer is on, turn it off.
2. Reset the power manager by simultaneously pressing and then releasing Shift-Control-Option-Power on the keyboard. Do not press the fn (Function) key while using this combination of keystrokes.
3. Wait 5 seconds.
4. Press the Power button to restart the computer.
 

mainstreetmark

macrumors 68020
Original poster
May 7, 2003
2,228
293
Saint Augustine, FL
It's been up for 6 hours and 8 minutes, tho I confess to not "using" it during this time as I was working out in the physical world today.

I am gonna hope that the PMU reset did the trick, because I really couldn't take the PowerBook being dead, as it is my soul source of entertainment (music, DVD's, other stuff)

PS: The battery is still out.
PPS: I also cleaned the screen, which probably helped. :)
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.