[G4] Quicksilver/Panther Won't Auto Sleep

[Jim Thornton]

Hi, All -- please pardon the long post; I've tried to be complete.

I have a 2001 Quicksilver 733 that I've run OS X on since I got it; with
some versions of 10.2.x and 10.3.x my Mac suddenly stops automatically
sleeping. Energy Saver settings are fine; can't relate the problem to
changing hardware or software, either.

For a couple of years I've used an IOgear USB 2.0 PCI card that works with
some devices, but with others causes the Mac to freeze when sleeping; I
removed this PCI card the other day (have no other PCI cards). Lately, it
seemed that the two powered USB 1.0 hubs attached to the CPU USB ports were
flaky; I removed both and have only the keyboard and mouse attached to the
built-in USB ports.

Each time I have the "won't auto sleep" problem, I go thru the Repair
Permissions, DiskWarrior, MacJanitor, reset PRAM, et al fixes; sometimes
this will take care of it and other times it won't.

The current problem started a couple of months ago for no apparent reason; I
had been on 10.3.5 and it started about the time I upgraded to 10.3.6, if I
recall correctly. I've repeatedly tried all the above fixes to no avail. I
recently upgraded to 10.3.7, but that did nothing. I have two different Test
User log-in's that I tried, but it still won't auto sleep.

Tonight, I trashed the com.apple.systempreferences.plist file in the
user/library/preferences folder. (Actually, I also trashed the
com.apple.systempreferences.00039363681a.plist file in the
user/library/preferences/ByHost folder because I spotted that one first.)
This had no effect.

Two days ago, I booted into Safe Mode (using the Shift Key at startup) --
the Mac automatically slept as it should!!! This fact has got to be a clue,
but I don't know how to use it to proceed further -- any ideas would be
greatly appreciated.

Jim Thornton