2015 MBP 15, High Sierra, Black screen after waking from sleep.

[powerslave12r]

Hey there,

I noticed that the 2015 MBP 15 does not wake up like it used to from sleep. It goes straight to a black screen and will not come out of that state until it's hard reset with the power button.

I have seen a few others mention this issue but only workarounds as solutions.

Has anyone seen this issue and have you been able to resolve it?

Thank you.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I’ve had this happen occasionally on my MacBook Air as well. It’s been happening for years. Sometimes fiddling with screen and keyboard brightness controls or logging out of the user helps (SHIFT+CMD+Q). If I can’t get the screen to light up after a couple of tries then I have to hard reset like you did.

I can tell it’s in this state because the caps lock key light will turn on/off when you press the key.

 

[powerslave12r]

I’ve had this happen occasionally on my MacBook Air as well. It’s been happening for years. Sometimes fiddling with screen and keyboard brightness controls or logging out of the user helps (SHIFT+CMD+Q). If I can’t get the screen to light up after a couple of tries then I have to hard reset like you did.

I can tell it’s in this state because the caps lock key light will turn on/off when you press the key.

Oh no! So does that mean that I have to live with this from here on?

Perhaps a clean install of High Sierra might help?

If anyone does know how to fix this, please share!

 

[Nixir]

Hey there,

I noticed that the 2015 MBP 15 does not wake up like it used to from sleep. It goes straight to a black screen and will not come out of that state until it's hard reset with the power button.

I have seen a few others mention this issue but only workarounds as solutions.

Has anyone seen this issue and have you been able to resolve it?

Thank you.

This seemed to work for some people. Do so at your own risk.

https://www.cultofmac.com/227679/sa...disable-safesleep-mode-on-your-mac-os-x-tips/

 

[powerslave12r]

This seemed to work for some people. Do so at your own risk.

https://www.cultofmac.com/227679/sa...disable-safesleep-mode-on-your-mac-os-x-tips/

Thanks for sharing. That seems unnatural to tweak something like that, but I'll look into it, although I doubt I may end up doing it.

 

[Nixir]

Thanks for sharing. That seems unnatural to tweak something like that, but I'll look into it, although I doubt I may end up doing it.

There's nothing "unnatural" about it. It's a safety feature that protects against unreliable power sources (it's off by default on macs without batteries). So depending on your individual use case it may or may not be useful.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Oh no! So does that mean that I have to live with this from here on?

Perhaps a clean install of High Sierra might help?

If anyone does know how to fix this, please share!

I’ve dealt with this on an occasional basis since 2012, when I bought an 11” MBA. For me anyways, this isn’t a new bug brought on by High Sierra.

 

[powerslave12r]

I’ve dealt with this on an occasional basis since 2012, when I bought an 11” MBA. For me anyways, this isn’t a new bug brought on by High Sierra.

That sucks, thanks for sharing your experience.
[doublepost=1507300720][/doublepost]

There's nothing "unnatural" about it. It's a safety feature that protects against unreliable power sources (it's off by default on macs without batteries). So depending on your individual use case it may or may not be useful.

I appreciate the suggestion, but it still is a workaround, not a solution.

According to what you say, I will be turning off protection for the MBP against unreliable power sources. I use it at various locations, so unfortunately I do not feel comfortable turning off that feature. Thanks for the suggestion, it is good to know that option exists.

I have just updated High Sierra with the supplemental upgrade and done a few clean shutdowns and reboots just to be sure.

Will report if I continue to notice the issue.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"That seems unnatural to tweak something like that, but I'll look into it, although I doubt I may end up doing it."

Nothing "unnatural" about it.

Just disable "hibernate mode" using terminal.
You can then remove the sleep image if you want by using an additional command.

Try running like that for, say, 2-3 days.
Do your problems disappear?
If so, isn't that "the goal" that you were looking for?

If it makes no difference, you can always re-enable hibernate mode.
But it's among the first things I TURN OFF when I set up a new MacBook...

Fishrrman's advice:
"Go with what works..."

 

[powerslave12r]

OP wrote:
"That seems unnatural to tweak something like that, but I'll look into it, although I doubt I may end up doing it."

Nothing "unnatural" about it.

Just disable "hibernate mode" using terminal.
You can then remove the sleep image if you want by using an additional command.

Try running like that for, say, 2-3 days.
Do your problems disappear?
If so, isn't that "the goal" that you were looking for?

If it makes no difference, you can always re-enable hibernate mode.
But it's among the first things I TURN OFF when I set up a new MacBook...

Fishrrman's advice:
"Go with what works..."

I haven't looked in to what the solution does so I don't know exactly what I'm disabling, but I'll look into it in a bit.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I haven't looked in to what the solution does so I don't know exactly what I'm disabling, but I'll look into it in a bit.

Basically, there are two sleep modes. The first one is a "light" sleep, with power still being supplied to RAM. When your laptop is in this state, wake time will be almost instant.

The second sleep mode is a "heavier" sleep, with RAM being dumped to disk as a pagefile the same size as the RAM in your machine. When your laptop is in this state, it takes extra time for that 4/8/16GB pagefile to be read back into RAM. This is what causes wake time to take longer.

The solution proposed above was to delete the sleepimage file so you laptop can never go into this deeper state. This means if your laptop's battery runs out of juice while in sleep state, everything is lost, and you will have to reboot. That's the "less safe" part of the change. It doesn't lower your laptop's guard to dodgy power adapters (which you shouldn't use anyway). It doesn't raise its guard either. That's based on whatever hardware Apple designed to protect the innards from over/under voltage/amperage.

 

[powerslave12r]

Just glanced over that article and it seems to suggest Safesleep is a redundant recovery mechanism in addition to AutoSave/Resume?

Sorry I'm not used to OSX, primarily linux, so I'm used to the sleep on closed lid, and wakeup on opened lid kind of workflow. I am aware of the hibernate "feature" in windows, and I do know what that does. SafeSleep sounds like it is the equivalent of that, but not sure how AutoSave/Resume play into all this.
[doublepost=1507301913][/doublepost]

Basically, there are two sleep modes. The first one is a "light" sleep, with power still being supplied to RAM. When your laptop is in this state, wake time will be almost instant.

The second sleep mode is a "heavier" sleep, with RAM being dumped to disk as a pagefile the same size as the RAM in your machine. When your laptop is in this state, it takes extra time for that 4/8/16GB pagefile to be read back into RAM. This is what causes wake time to take longer.

The solution proposed above was to delete the sleepimage file so you laptop can never go into this deeper state. This means if your laptop's battery runs out of juice while in sleep state, everything is lost, and you will have to reboot. That's the "less safe" part of the change. It doesn't lower your laptop's guard to dodgy power adapters (which you shouldn't use anyway). It doesn't raise its guard either. That's based on whatever hardware Apple designed to protect the innards from over/under voltage/amperage.

Ah, just saw your post after I posted my last reply.

SafeSleep == Windows hibernate.

AutoSave/Resume == Sleep.

So, with Autosave/Resume, will the state will be maintained between reboots? That is, does it write to disk on a reboot?

 

[powerslave12r]

I was hoping the supplemental upgrade would change something, but the issue persists.

I guess I'll go ahead and try disabling the SafeSleep after all.

Thanks for the help.

 

[powerslave12r]

Tried out the suggested fix/workaround, but it would not let me move/delete the sleepimage. Even forcing did not help.

Disabling safesleep made no difference.
Resetting NVRAM and SMC made no difference.

I guess the next thing to do is to do a clean install of High Sierra.

 

[bluball]

Had same issue on a 2013 retina with High Sierra - couldn't get the screen back from sleep, would just stay black. Clean install or pram/smc reset/tweaking power options didn't help, in the end I did a clean install of Sierra.

So much for "just werks".

 

[Razorhog]

I'm having this problem too, on a late 2013 Mac Pro. Never happened until I upgraded to High Sierra.

 

[powerslave12r]

I'm having this problem too, on a late 2013 Mac Pro. Never happened until I upgraded to High Sierra.

I've tried various suggested fixes, nothing seems to have helped.

I'm going to do a clean install of High Sierra. If that doesn't work, I'm going back to Sierra.

I have also noticed sluggishness in responsiveness.

 

[jerryk]

I have also noticed sluggishness in responsiveness.

Mine actually feels considerably more responsive with High Sierra. Especially screen drawing. The dGPU seems to like Metal 2.

 

[powerslave12r]

Mine actually feels considerably more responsive with High Sierra. Especially screen drawing. The dGPU seems to like Metal 2.

That's good to hear. Perhaps my upgrade just did not go well. I do not have the dGPU though, so I don't know.

Hopefully a clean install sets things right.

 

[IPadNParadise]

Have owned my 2015 MBP since Dec ‘15 and only had this issue in the last 3 months. Right or wrong, I always just closed the lid on the MBP when I wasn’t using it even if several days went by without using rather than a shut down. Wake upon opening lid, never an issue. So this not waking from sleep started in Sierra. It was still there after updating to High Sierra. I reset SMC and NVRAM, issuer still there. I have Apple Care, so I called. They had me shut down and start in Safe Mode, then restart. Course, it woke, when closing/opening lid, while I was on the phone so could tell nothing right then. Hours later I saw once again...no wake from sleep. For the time being, I am shutting the MBP down between uses. I am an hour away from an Apple Store so as long as this complete shut down, allows a power up when hitting the power button, I’ll use that method.

 

[powerslave12r]

Have owned my 2015 MBP since Dec ‘15 and only had this issue in the last 3 months. Right or wrong, I always just closed the lid on the MBP when I wasn’t using it even if several days went by without using rather than a shut down. Wake upon opening lid, never an issue. So this not waking from sleep started in Sierra. It was still there after updating to High Sierra. I reset SMC and NVRAM, issuer still there. I have Apple Care, so I called. They had me shut down and start in Safe Mode, then restart. Course, it woke, when closing/opening lid, while I was on the phone so could tell nothing right then. Hours later I saw once again...no wake from sleep. For the time being, I am shutting the MBP down between uses. I am an hour away from an Apple Store so as long as this complete shut down, allows a power up when hitting the power button, I’ll use that method.

That sucks.

I just opened the MBP and this time I noticed the notebook was warm. This is not the first time I noticed this. Which makes me indicate that there is some issue while shutting down.

That seems pretty risky if this were to happen inside a backpack or something.

 

[powerslave12r]

I've performed a clean install of High Sierra and this is the first time that it has not woken up to a black screen. We shall see if it holds up.

I did notice the warm palmrest (and possibly the whole notebook) even this time, that cooled off immediately after opening the lid and using it for a minute or two.

Does anyone know what this could be?

Thanks!

 

[thefriendshipmachine]

I've performed a clean install of High Sierra and this is the first time that it has not woken up to a black screen. We shall see if it holds up.

I did notice the warm palmrest (and possibly the whole notebook) even this time, that cooled off immediately after opening the lid and using it for a minute or two.

Does anyone know what this could be?

Thanks!

I don't know if mine is hot after coming out of sleep. I am about to go to sleep myself so I will report back and tell you if it does in the morning. I disabled hibernate mode by the way (to try and fix the black screen bug).
[doublepost=1508051674][/doublepost]

Basically, there are two sleep modes. The first one is a "light" sleep, with power still being supplied to RAM. When your laptop is in this state, wake time will be almost instant.

The second sleep mode is a "heavier" sleep, with RAM being dumped to disk as a pagefile the same size as the RAM in your machine. When your laptop is in this state, it takes extra time for that 4/8/16GB pagefile to be read back into RAM. This is what causes wake time to take longer.

The solution proposed above was to delete the sleepimage file so you laptop can never go into this deeper state. This means if your laptop's battery runs out of juice while in sleep state, everything is lost, and you will have to reboot. That's the "less safe" part of the change. It doesn't lower your laptop's guard to dodgy power adapters (which you shouldn't use anyway). It doesn't raise its guard either. That's based on whatever hardware Apple designed to protect the innards from over/under voltage/amperage.

I disabled hibernation mode in terminal although it doesn't let me rm -rf the sleepimage file. It just says operation not permitted even if I run the command in sudo. Do I have to disable system integrity first perhaps?

 

[powerslave12r]

I don't know if mine is hot after coming out of sleep. I am about to go to sleep myself so I will report back and tell you if it does in the morning. I disabled hibernate mode by the way (to try and fix the black screen bug).
[doublepost=1508051674][/doublepost]

I disabled hibernation mode in terminal although it doesn't let me rm -rf the sleepimage file. It just says operation not permitted even if I run the command in sudo. Do I have to disable system integrity first perhaps?

I was unable to delete the file as well and did not think it was good sense to try and force something beyond that.


Bad news, the fresh install of High Sierra does not seem to have helped. The problem persists.

Could someone suggest what the best way to get help from Apple would be? Go to the store or call them up? How can I show an issue like this to them? Take a video or something or just get it to a point where it's stuck in this black screen mode and then take it to them?

 

[PBG4 Dude]

I disabled hibernation mode in terminal although it doesn't let me rm -rf the sleepimage file. It just says operation not permitted even if I run the command in sudo. Do I have to disable system integrity first perhaps?

Yes, you have to disable SIP before you can delete that file.