Mac OS X 10.4.1 (#6): Problems with sleep: External devices (especially Bluetooth) may be at fault; more

CNET staff

Sept. 2, 2009 11:31 a.m. PT

4 min read

Problems with sleep: External devices (especially Bluetooth) may be at fault We continue to report on sleep after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.4.1. These include an inability to properly go to sleep, problems waking from sleep, and the display going to sleep without the Mac going to sleep.

In many cases, these issues are caused by errant external devices, including USB and FireWire-connected peripherals, and most commonly, Bluetooth devices.

One MacFixIt reader reports that, in his case, a Bluetooth mouse was causing repeatable sleep issues:

"I was able to nail down the cause of my G4's inability to sleep since applying the Mac OS X 10.4.1 update. My MacAlly BTmouse Jr apparently prevents my Mac from going to sleep. I can manually select Sleep, but the G4 will instantly wake back up when the MacAlly Bluetooth mouse is connected. This was not a problem under Mac OS X 10.4. It is reported that Apple's Bluetooth mouse doesn't have this problem under Mac OS X 10.4.1. This is a real inconvenience since I must use a Bluetooth mouse for my particular set-up."

In some cases, the problem can be worked around by turning off the option "Allow Bluetooth Devices to Wake this Computer in the Bluetooth pane of System Preferences.

Meanwhile, MacFixIt reader Alan Klein offers some detail, gleaned from a third-party Bluetooth mouse manufacturer, on what exactly is causing the issue, and another workaround:

"(After determining that my third-party Bluetooth mouse was to blame for sleep issues under Mac OS X 10.4.1) I placed a call to RadTech. Their Tech Support rep explained that the mouse was in fine shape but, unlike Apple's BlueTooth mouse, when the BT500 enters energy saving mode it looses connection with the Mac, which in turn triggers a mouse event each time the "Connection Lost" message appears on the screen that keeps the Mac awake. He said that the mouse must be turned off in order for Sleep to function correctly. This behavior also awakens the Mac immediately after choosing Sleep manually which was the cause of my manual Sleep issues (though he'd never heard of that crashing the SystemUIServer). He walked me through some other steps as well:

Un-check "Discoverable" in the Bluetooth System Preferences if you're not using it.
Remove potentially corrupted Bluetooth preference file if Bluetooth usability issues persist: Turn Bluetooth off - go to /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences - trash file named: "com.apple.Bluetooth.plist" Restart and turn Bluetooth on, then re-pair all devices - please check #4 above.
Unexplained BT issues / erratic device behavior can often be resolved by simply removing the offending device's pairing, then pairing again.
Sleep: Switch non-Apple BT devices off and wait for "Connect Lost" message to appear onscreen before putting computer to sleep.

"After trashing to BlueTooth prefs as recommended above, I had to turn off 'Discoverable' on the Bluetooth menu again (as in step 1 above) [...] I have had no additional sleep issues since. The computer has been sleeping and waking with no problems since first performing these steps. (I have also been using the Apple Bluetooth mouse almost exclusively because I am too lazy to remember to turn off the mouse and thus allow my computer to sleep and that is not a concern with Apple's Bluetooth mouse.)"

Spotlight Tip: Paste search strings We previously noted that one of the biggest user gripes with Mac OS X 10.4.x's Spotlight is a sometimes dramatic pause that occurs after typing one or two characters, as Spotlight begins searching immediately for all data containing those letters.

MacFixIt reader Tracy Valleau offers a simple tip for avoiding this slow-down -- typing the search string in an open text field then copying and pasting the text into the Spotlight search field.

Tracy writes:

"To dramatically speed up Spotlight or Find, just paste the search term in, instead of typing it."

Tiger Software compatibility list A quick reminder that our sister site VersionTracker carries a comprehensive list of Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)-compatible software updates.

Toast 6.1 "Toast It" contextual menu not working, fix Several readers have reported that the "Toast It" contextual menu plug-in -- which allows direct burning of data from the Finder -- included with Roxio's Toast Titanium 6.1 does not function properly under Mac OS X 10.4.x.

According to a thread on Roxio's discussion boards, the problem occurs only with the version of the "Toast It" plug-in included with Toast 6.1. The version of the plug-in included with Toast 6.0.9 does not exhibit the issue.

Hence, the fix for this problem is to replace the "Toast It" plug-in installed by Toast 6.1 with the release included with Toast 6.0.9.

This can be accomplished via the following process:

Download the Toast 6.0.9 updater and mount its disk image.
Control-click on the Toast 6.0.9 application package (contained on the mounted disk image) and select "Show Package Contents."
From the resulting window, navigate to the Contents/Resources directory and find the file "ToastIt.plugin"
Copy this file to your ~/Library/Contextual Menu Items folder, replacing the previous (6.1) version, then either restart or log out and back in.

Previous Mac OS X 10.4.1 coverage:

Resources

Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger)-comp...

Toast 6.0.9 updater

Mac OS X 10.4.1 (#5): Loss...

Mac OS X 10.4.1 (#4): Slee...

Apple details security enh...

Mac OS X 10.4.1 (#3): Spot...

Mac OS X 10.4.1 (#2): Diff...

Apple releases Mac OS X 10...