Late-2008 MacBooks: Freezes when waking from sleep (cont.)

Freezes when waking from sleep (cont.) Users responded in droves to our initial coverage of an issue in which Late-2008 (unibody) MacBooks and MacBook Pros freeze when waking from sleep. A sampling of the reader reports:

• "I am having the same issue. Sometimes my late 2008 Macbook Pro wakes from sleep, sometimes it randomly wakes up from hibernation when there is ample battery, and sometimes it totally shows just a black screen waking from sleep. I have to force it off and back on. I have started shutting it down instead of letting it sleep."
• "I've had the freeze after sleep problem several times now, and I called tech support because I've also had to deal with exceptional battery drain when my computer is in transport mode, which MacFixIt reported earlier."
• "I am having similar issues. At first I thought it was just with an external monitor, but I''m now experiencing it with just the laptop display. The only way to get the machine running again is to force the power off and then restart it."

Supporting our earlier postulation that the issue may involve errant external devices, users have submitted system logs revealing the following entry when the freeze occurs:

"10/29/08 6:35:06 PM kernel USBF: 9913.165 [0x7330200] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in. It will keep retrying. (Port 1 of hub @ location: 0x3a000000)"

As such, we recommend that users do not connect or disconnect any external devices while the new MacBooks are asleep. Additionally, users may want to disconnect any external devices before putting the machines to sleep.

In addition, some users have found that running a suite of maintenance/clean-up routines--clearing caches, erasing spotlight database, rebuilding launch services, etc.--with a tool like Cocktail at least temporarily resolves this issue.

Wireless issues Meanwhile, some suers are beginning to report wireless connection (AirPort) issues, especially when connected to third-party routers. These issues include an inability to connect to routers, weak signal strength, and a problem in which signal strength fails to fluctuate appropriately when there is actually stronger or weaker signals.

If you are experiencing a similar issue, please let us know.

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