My 2011 MacBook Pro has been having a problem occasionally where I put it to sleep, but it continues to run. Later when I go use it again, I realize that it was on the whole time (usually inside my bag), and by this point it is blazing hot and the fan is running at full power. It is unresponsive at this point, and I have to hold the power button to restart it. This happens I'd guess every few weeks on average, sometimes more often, sometimes less.
I often bounce between an office and home where at both locations, I use an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. This freezing seems to happen only when I'm leaving one of these two locations, in which case I follow the following procedure:
- Move mouse to HotCorner to put monitor to sleep (I do this instead of closing the lid since Lion has lid closing assume the external is taking over as primary display.)
- Close lid to put computer to sleep
- Disconnect cables (power, display port, usb; maybe ethernet and audio depending on location).
Lately, I've been suspecting that the above actions somehow conflict, so I've been trying to wait a few seconds between each step. I think this was helping, but today I forgot about this plan (i.e. less than 1/2 second between actions), and the crash returned.
I first contacted Apple in February, and they had me boot into safe-mode to reset something, then reset the PRAM. This didn't help, as the freezes returned. After today's crash, I called Apple again, and they recommended I try reinstalling Lion (running 10.7.3), and if that doesn't help, then go to Apple store for hardware tests.
I will give this a try, but before I do, I wanted to see if anyone has a better idea on how to prevent this from happening.
For now, I've also removed my HotCorner, and will simply use the menu or keyboard to trigger system sleep before closing my lid (i.e. to make sure that the monitor-sleep and system-sleep commands are not conflicting).
Update: I reworded some of above to try to entice solutions. Additionally, I should note that at my office, the USB is used for keyboard and mouse vs. at home, USB Is used for keyboard, mouse and external drive. The display port in both cases is connected to a DVI adapter.