Used to auto sleep, then stopped - testing fix

[the_gael]

I thought I would share this in case anyone else has or has had a similar issue.

My El Capitan 10.11.6 build stopped auto sleeping in the last month and I could not figure out why. My hardware had not changed , my software had not changed, my config.plist remained the same but a machine that used to auto sleep perfectly stopped doing so. I tried stopping various cloud storage apps such as Amazon Cloud, Google Drive etc... This had no effect.

I was about to disconnect my ssd and connect another one on which to install the latest public beta of Sierra and disconnected all my USB drives (3 of them) and shut down the machine. Before I could swap drives a friend called me for some info and I booted into my machine again, got the info and chatted on the phone. To my surprise the machine auto slept as I was talking with him.

So after this I tested and found that if I shutdown the machine with a drive or drives connected and removed one or all of them when the machine was shutdown it would not auto sleep again when it was booted again. However if I ejected them all, shutdown and subsequently added them all the machine would work perfectly. This was true whether 1, 2 or 3 drives were connected after performing the eject and shutdown sequence.

I am guessing that somewhere a cache is remembering what drives were connected and it is affecting sleep.

I have now found that in my Clover Preferences in System Preferences save NVRAM contents to disk was set to Auto and I always have it at Never.

At this point I am unsure if this was the cause of my issue or not as am still testing.

I thought I would throw it out there and see if someone can tell me if this is a "red herring". Could info about connected hardware be stored in NVRAM? My machine is currently sleeping correctly so will test by removing a USB drive while the machine is switched off and see if it breaks Auto Sleep as has been happening for a while. (I have now set Save NVRAM Contents to Disk to NEVER.

 

[the_gael]

OK, auto sleep still works at present after removing a USB drive while the machine was shutdown. I will now see if it continues to work correctly over an extended period of time. For Information this is not the machine in my signature but a Z97-D3H, with latest Clover and El Capitan 10.11.6.

Edited to add

That appears to have fixed it.

 

[the_gael]

It appears as if NVRAM was a red herring. I just experienced the same issue without NVRAM being saved to disk. I wonder if the USB Fixes have something to do with this.

 

[the_gael]

Just in case anyone else is experiencing similar issue - here is how I resolve it. This works on a Z97-D3H to get auto sleep working again if a USB drive is removed while the computer is switched off.

1 Plug in all USB drives and then Eject them.
2 Reboot
3 Restore Defaults in Energy Saver, then adjust as necessary (I uncheck Enable Power Nap and Wake for Network Access).
4 Reboot
5 Wait for machine to sleep.
6 If machine auto-sleeps successfully plug USB drives back in and should now auto-sleep correctly unless a USB drive is removed when machine is shutdown.