iMAC 5K Black Screen of Sleep

JeepNerd37
New Contributor

Noticing an issue with some of my iMAC 5Ks. When the machine puts the display to sleep, the display doesn't always wake up. However the machine is still running, for example music that was left on will continue to play but the display remains black. However the only way to get the display back is to force a shutdown or some people have told they're pulling the plug (both of which make my skin crawl).

-I've reset the SMC. No change behavior.

-I've reset the PRAM. No change there either.

  • I've combed through our Energy Saver profiles and I do not see how this would be a cause. We have many Macbook Pro's that use the Energy Saver profiles and do not have this issue.

The machine I am using as the focus of my troubleshooting is a Late 2015 Retina 5K 27 inch iMAC. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

9 REPLIES 9

JeepNerd37
New Contributor
 

endor-moon
Contributor II

Our school has 32 of these, configure-to-order with 16GB of RAM and 1TB Fusion drive. I haven't seen this problem, though the one on my desk has done some strange things. What configuration are your systems? Any secondary display attached?

You can always have users shutdown or restart with a keyboard shortcut. Control-command-eject will restart unless an open application needs to save something or ask something. Control-option-command-eject will shutdown.

I'm using a script for Energy Saver settings:

#!/bin/sh
# Power management settings
# Updated July 22

# erase any existing schedule
pmset repeat cancel
# startup or wake every weekday at 4:45 AM
pmset repeat wakeorpoweron MTWRF 04:45:00
# wake on magic packet
pmset womp 1
# restart after power fails, always
systemsetup -setrestartpowerfailure on
# never sleep, disks never, displays in 30
pmset -a sleep 0 disksleep 0 displaysleep 30
# darkwakes should be off if supported
pmset -c darkwakes 0

CapU
Contributor III

I discovered that Adobe Creative Cloud Desktop will have adverse affects on some machines. Also if you have Protools installed. The HD audio driver can cause some problems.

jared_f
Valued Contributor

I agree, it does not look profile related (still remove it through the MDM though). When having issues like this, I use a maintenance application I found online. (It is great.) I will link it below. It will run Maintenance Task, Rebuild, and Clean your system. Give it a shot. I hope it works.

http://www.titanium.free.fr/maintenance.html

Maineboy22
New Contributor

that seems strange that it would be an Adobe problem. I have over 100 machines running the adobe creative cloud desktop and only a couple iMacs that are having the wake-up issue.

Maineboy22
New Contributor

That titanium.free software looks great but I couldn't get it to run. I tried it on two different systems both running El Cap but no luck.

Bummer.

Maineboy22
New Contributor

I'm using a configuration Profile on 27" iMac 5k, brand new and every morning when the user comes in the computer has gone to sleep despite be set to not go to sleep ever. When the user tries to wake the machine up he just gets the spinning beach ball of death and then has to do a hard restart.

prevent computer from sleeping, never put hard disk to sleep etc etc.

Can't figure it out.

easyedc
Valued Contributor II

What other security agents do you have running? We use one, digital guardian, and have an open ticket with them regarding inconsistent performance on wake from sleep.

jared_f
Valued Contributor

@Maineboy22 I am wondering why it will not run for you. I had a few machines with El Capitan and it ran fine. Are you on an account with full admin privileges?