This morning, after my usual read of the news & stuff, I headed off to the shower and my MBP should have done its usual thing of slipping into screensaver mode. When I came back, it had a blank screen (instead of the electric sheep screensaver I use) and when I hit the space bar or jiggled the touchpad, it wouldnt resume.

I noticed that the standby light embedded in the latch [standby light] pulses 3 times every 5-8 seconds or so.

I tried powering off and then restarting and I get 'chime' sound, hear the cd spin, etc but it remains with a blank screen and the standby does the 3 pulse thing

I had only just upgraded to 10.5.4 the other evening but it has been running that for 24 hours with no issues.

Anyone have any ideas and a possible quick fix? If worst comes to it, I can pop to the London Apple shop but I have a gig to play on Friday night so cannot be without it!

Thanks for any help/information any one can provide.

MacBook Pro 2.2 Ghz
Santa Rosa chipset 800Mhz FSB 2Gb RAM

Was the computer plugged to the main power source when you tried to turn it on?
Did you power it off by holding the power button down long enough until the computer was off?
Do you have any devices connected to it? If so, try unplugging them.

I assume it must be some application that is not resuming from standby correctly (maybe the screensaver). Try disabling that screensaver and see what happens, once the computer wakes up again.

Thanks for the fast reply Hecker.

I did have it plugged into the mains but I now have the it at work with me and its running on battery.

I have tried holding down the power button for approx 10 secs and hear the 'pffhizztt' sound of it powering down. [I should say that I work in tech support but with PCs but this is my first mac and I loves it!].

I have tried removing all the devices [and as I have it with me at work, they are completely disconnected].

I just spoke to Apple Care but my telephone support ran out 3 months ago so I would have to pay a per incident fee or extend my Apple Care for 3 years. I did get it out of the techie that my MBP is not resuming from sleep and he suggested a couple of things:

* Flushing the PRAM by holding down CMD-Alt-P-R on boot [this had no effect]
* Removing the battery and holding the power button for 5 seconds [not sure if this was with the mains supply still attached but its at home so I cant do that but this also had no effect!]

Any other suggestions?

[EDITED TO ADD] It looks like its down to the 'safe sleep' mode issue. All I have to do now is resume the machine so that I can switch it to 'smart sleep' mode to avoid this in future.

SOLVED!!

I found out from a guy @ apple care that the standby light pulsing twice is indication of a logic board problem and three pulses is indicative of RAM failure.

I swapped out one of the sticks and found that I had some failed RAM.

Apple Computers! They just work!

This just goes to show you that all computers are NOT immune to hardware and user failure. Maybe some fan boys will read this and see...

Just how do you get, "immune to hardware and user failure" when he said "I had some failed RAM"?
Or did you mean "that all computers are prone to hardware and user failure"?

immune
adjective
1 protected against a particular disease by particular substances in the blood:
Most people who've had chicken pox once are immune to it for the rest of their lives.
He seems to be immune to colds - he just never gets them.

2 [after verb] not affected or upset by a particular type of behaviour or emotion:
The press had criticised her so often that in the end she had become immune (to it).

3 [after verb] not able to be punished or damaged by something:
Journalists, he insisted, must be immune (= protected) from prosecution.
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)

SticMAN
ps, you should choose your words carefully, before you attack us fanboys!

My bad. I left out "NOT."

So it would be NOT IMMUNE!

Before this descends into a war of words, let me point out that I did actually recently put 2 sticks of 2Gb Crucial RAM in my MBP so it was bumped upto 4Gb. The MBP didnt really fail - the sticks from Crucial did.

When I got my MBP first of all [back in February] , it did, "just work" but like the nasty slave driver I am, I wanted it to "just work more"! ;-)

I have to add as well that I work in DSS supporting windows boxes for about 550 users, have been a windows user for about 12 years and a Linux flirter for about 7 but when I come home, I am purely monogamous with my MBP!! Give me about 5 years with it and then ask me again.

I am running a MacBook Pro intel duo 10.4.11.
I have been running the sheep screen saver for about 18 months. Today when I went to the hot corner to enable it the screen saver did not start and the screen turned grey and froze the system.
I pushed on the on/off switch and it powered down. I then restarted. I went to system preferences and ran the test to enable the screen saver and it did the same thing.
I then ran Tech Tool Deluxe with no problems found.
The screen saver still is not working. I have installed any new software or new updates other then the Apple security update.

Any one have any ideas on how to proceed to fix it?