[MacBook] What's keeping it from sleeping?

[swiss_guy]

Hi,

I have a MacBook and I sometimes have trouble with the automatic sleep function of it. Sleep, Standby and all that stuff usually works well, only sometimes when I just keep my MacBook on, it doesn't go to sleep by itself. First I thought I probably had something opened that's still doing something, but then just for testing, I closed everything but mail, address book and iCal, but it would still not sleep, just turn off the screen and keep running.

So I'm wondering right now, if there is any way to find out, what is keeping the MacBook awake? Any kind of log or something? I couldn't see anything suspicious in the processes.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[spec09]

Did you check the obvious things? Like the settings in Energy Saver?

Also the most common reason is a background application that connects to the internet or your local network. If you have hp or canon driver software, turn its settings off or delete it from your computer. Also try resetting the pmu.

[swiss_guy]

I reset PMU, no change.

I changed the Energy Settings to display off / sleep after 1 minute.
Didn't sleep
I still had itunes, Mail, Firefox, iCal, AddressBook open, closed all those.
Didn't sleep.
Kill background processes, growlhelper, ituneshelper, awakenhelper
Didn't sleep
turned off bluetooth and airport.
Didn't sleep
removed external screen.
Didn't sleep.

I'm really clueless right now, because even after restarting, it doesn't sleep by itself anymore. It works fine, when I select Sleep from the menu, so it actually works, just something is blocking it. The display turns off after a minute, so I guess that's a good sign that the Energy Saving thing is working in general.

Here is the exported list of all the processes that are still running. If something looks suspicious, let me know.

http://img57.imageshack.us/img57/8161/picture2oo4.png

[swiss_guy]

So here is some more info.

I closed each and every widget I had in the Dashboard.
Didn't sleep.
I changed the hibernate mode manually (http://www.macworld.com/article/53471/2006/10/sleepmode.html) to all different ones, just to force a change.
Didn't sleep
Set it back to 7 and yes, VM is secure in the Security pane.
Didn't sleep.
I started in safe boot, since this was a recommendation by Apple (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1776).
It slept. !!!! So it works, but it's some sort of software issue.
I restarted in regular mode, but didn't login.
It slept. So it is something when I log in.

How can I figure out, what is NOT started, when I do safe boot?

[Former Bender]

Check and list here the Startup items you have in:

/Library/StartupItems/
/System/Library/StartupItems/

[swiss_guy]

/System/Library/StartupItems is empty and in my user folder, I don't even have the folder StartupItems, inside the Library folder.

I also repaired disk permissions in the meanwhile, no change.

[PathDaemon]

Check /Library/Extensions, /Library/LaunchDaemons, and /Libary/LaunchAgents.

If you log out, does it sleep automatically when at the login window?

Also, are there any peripherals connected?