Fixing the MacBook Pro Sleep Problem

One of the things that my MacBook Pro has been plagued with for about the past month is it’s inability to go to sleep and wake back up successfully.  Whenever I would open the lid to wake up the system, the screen would be completely blank, even though you hear the system come back on.

I’ve been searching around looking for the solution and haven’t been successfully.  Editing the sleep settings didn’t seem to cure anything.  I was trying to correlate what updates had been installed around the time that the problem started.

It seems that the problem started shortly after the Leopard 10.5.2 update.  This update also contained a second update for the graphics driver. 

I came across a thread today on the Mac support forum where someone built a rollback package for the graphics driver would took the driver back to the previous version before the graphics update.

I have put my Mac to sleep several times today and have awaken the system as well with success every time.  I am thrilled to say that this problem is resolved.

At this time, it is confirmed that Apple is aware of the issue and it is a confirmed bug.  There is no timeframe for when an official package to address the issue will be available.

In the time-being, you can check out the thread and if you’re up to it, try the rollback package that is available on the thread.  Use this at your own risk.  It has been known to cause problems on some systems.

Update – April 7,2008

Things are still running great after the graphic driver rollback.  I even have gone as far as leaving my VMware Fusion machines running and closing the lid to initiate sleep.  When I return and open the lid, the machine awakens almost immediately. 

I haven’t seen any new information on the graphic driver update and the problems it creates, but it is definitely something that Apple needs to be looking at.