Help a non-Mac user

[sting7k]

Ok so I cannot figure this out. My sister-in-law is the Mac user in my house. She has an iMac she got for graduation 2 years ago. It is in the spare bedroom across from mine. I like to leave the doors open for better AC flow at night. But for some reason her iMac will not ever stay asleep/hibernated/whatever for more than 10 minutes at a time. She and I have looked at the settings and it looks like it should go to sleep after 15 minutes and stay asleep but it wakes up normally after 10-20 minutes and the screen turns on and then it stays on for hours. Once in awhile it will go back to sleep but come back. The screen saver doesn't come on when this happens either. So it results in the big screen staying on and lighting up that room and mine pretty good as well.

Also I don't want it on wasting electricity and running up my bill when it should be asleep.

What is wrong with her iMac?

 

[killthelights32]

Could be one of two things.

First, I would look to see if the iMac is set to turn on at a certain time. To do this, open System Preferences, then Energy Saver, then click on the button in the lower right corner which says Schedule... Both boxes should be unchecked.

If that is not the case, I would reset what is called the PRAM. Basically, any hardware settings that have gone awry get reset, and this helps in most situations. To do this, reset your iMac. Before the screen comes back on and makes the 'doooooooo' sound, hold option-command-P-R

The 'doooooooo' sound will go off and the screen will come up grey, but keep holding until the screen goes blank again and then the iMac will start up again. That should solve your zombie mac.

 

[ghostface147]

Unplug the network cable. Maybe there's wake on LAN option enabled.