If you put your computer to sleep in one of these modes and find it immediately wakes back up again, fans whirring, login-screen ablazing, open a Command Prompt as Administrator (right click on the Command Prompt icon in the Start Menu>Accessories and select “Run as Administrator”). Then type:

powercfg -lastwake

You’ll likely see something like I did, and see a USB Root Hub caused the start.

type

powercfg -devicequery wake_armed

and it’ll give you the names of the devices that actually caused the wake-up signal to fire. For whatever reason, my Keyboard and Mouse both seemed to be culprits so I disabled them both by typing:
powercfg -devicedisablewake “HID-compliant Mouse”
powercfg -devicedisablewake “HID-Compliant Keyboard”

case was sensitive for those names and they matched the output from the “wake_armed” device query above. That did it, allowing my machine to sleep properly. Waking up now has to be done from the power button on the front of the case.

There are some additional tips in this post on vistax64.com which I may experiment with if I get the time, but the current setup is good for now.

I also experienced a lockup on my MacPro using the Computer Name screen saver. I locked the screen, walked away and when I came back, had a black screen with a mouse cursor on it. Couldn’t bring up the login dialog or connect to it through SSH.

Hopefully Apple releases another fix for these and whatever other issues are lurking under the covers tomorrow when they talk about the Snow Leopard release at WWDC.

There are a bunch of reports of Mac OS X 10.5.7 update breaking sleep on a variety of machines ranging from PowerMac G5s to MacBooks. I can personally vouch for having issues with my MacBook Pro and MacPro*.

The recommended fixes range from resetting the SMC on MacBook Pros to pulling all external USB and Firewire devices from the machines. As usual, a number of people are running the Repair Disk Permissions voodoo with little effect other than the feeling of well-being you get from taking a strong, well-documented placebo. Other suggestions include resetting the PRAM and NVRAM.

None of these suggestions have worked for my MacBook Pro. It’s incredibly frustrating and is going to make my laptop essentially useless if I can’t put it to sleep and wake it back up. Note that I get one free sleep by closing the lid. Subsequent attempts to sleep the machine cause it to freeze in a kind of blacked-out state. It seems to be running, but the display stays dark. I’ve heard reports of people being able to put their machines to sleep manually, but I haven’t tried this yet.

Worse, I tried running a system restore from Time Machine with an install disc. When the installer finally loads, the backlight turns off. Using a flashlight(!) to see the contents of the screen, I’m not given an option to select a restore point from my Time Capsule backup. I might be able to do a full install and restore up to my last safe point, but this scares me.

I strongly urge people to avoid 10.5.7 like the swine flu and stick with 10.5.6 until this is fixed.

* the MacPro issue is separate and involves it waking up sporadically from sleep

Update: this Apple Discussion thread describes the problem and a fix. The problem appears to be related to wireless network locations with disabled ethernet ports. Re-enabling the port seems to fix the issue.

Update 2: The fix worked. Re-enabling the Ethernet port seems to have fixed the sleep problem. Weird, but glad to have an answer. Thanks to the intrepid and persistent people in that apple discussion thread. I’ll keep looking for a fix for the issue with my Mac Pro.