EMac having issues waking from sleep

Question

I used to own a 1 gig eMac. I never had an issue with it, now that I have sold it however, it's having this issue waking from sleep. The only way to get it back is to power it down by holding the power button.
When I had it, I had Panther running on it's main drive and Tiger running on a firewire drive. Regardless though, I can't see that being the issue (well I guess I can ... I don't want to believe it, but I guess I can). Now it's running Tiger on the 80 gig main drive. When he goes to wake it, the drive spins up but the screen stays dark, but if he holds the power button down it works fine. Go figure?
Has anybody else had this issue. All of the software updates were and have been done since. Though I don't recall exactly which version of Tiger he's on but I know he's on the most recent. Any input will be greatly appreciated of course.
I don't know that the Apple Hardware Test would indicate if a hard drive was about to fail either would it?
Regards
Mike

Answer 1

I think what that post was trying to express is that there's often a lag between the release of new Mac hardware and the release of retail OS X Install discs that incorporate all the new drivers that go with the new hardware. That is, if you have a retail OS X disc that was pressed in January, it likely will give poor results if you use it to restore a Mac released in September. If you look at the Software section of System Profiler, after the OS X numerical version you'll find a build number in parentheses; "Mac OS X 10.4.11 (8S2167)", say. While you almost always hear the "don't use an earlier version of the OS on your new Mac" warning expressed in terms of the numerical OS X version, it's really the build number that matters. It's safe to say that you can use a retail OS X install disc on a Mac that predates the release of that OS X disc.
Since the 1.0 GHz eMac shipped with Panther 10.3, any retail 10.4 disc will work with it. So on one hand, good news: your buyer doesn't face the fun of doing a reinstall of the OS, but bad news, that leaves the question of why it isn't waking from sleep.
There could be a remote chance that the wireless mouse is involved, although it's unlikely and I've never had such problems with any of the Logitech mice I've used through the years. If you have the LCC (Logitech Control Center) software installed (it'll show up in System Preferences -> Other when using View by Categories) from the CD that came with the mice, you can compare it with the current version 2.6 and possibly upgrade. I'd also check that the mouse's battery is fresh.
You might get a better clue as to what's going on by opening Applications -> Utilities -> Console, select system.log, and look for events timestamped around the time the eMac was put to sleep and again at the it was attempted to wake it. You might find something like:
AFPSleepWakeHandler: going to sleep
System Sleep
Enabling XMM register save/restore and SSE/SSE2 opcodes
Followed, upon waking the computer, by:
Started CPU 01
IOBluetoothHCIController::restartShutdownWL this is a wake from sleep
System Wake
USB caused wake event (EHCI)
AppleYukon2 - en0 link active, 100-Mbit, full duplex, flow control disabled port 0
kernel[0]: AFPSleepWakeHandler: waking up
mDNSResponder: Repeated transitions for interface en0 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xx); delaying packets by 5 seconds
configd[67]: posting notification com.apple.system.config.network_change
lookupd[2678]: lookupd (version 369.6) starting - Wed Aug 20 08:06:57 2008
Some of the calls will depend on whether the Mac is on a network, managed remotely, etc. What you want to look for are any errors or suspicious messages close to the AFPSleepWakeHandler call, around either the System Sleep or System Wake lines.