Bookmark this site!

2009-06-10

MacBook Air freeze: reset SMC

Daily, I take my MBA to work, and connect it to my 30" cinema display. At the end of the day I disconnect and take it home. Once back home, I plug into the 24" LED display and keep on working. The MBA sleeps while I'm cycling to and fro — and wakes up when I plug it in.

Today, I got home, plugged in, and found a blank screen. I waited; nothing happened. I waited some more. Eventually I gave up waiting and did a forced shut-down, by pressing and holding the power button.

To restart, I pressed the power button. The chimes, and the apple came up just as usual; then the little wheel thing came up, but it didn't move. I waited — nothing. I plugged in, unplugged, opened. closed, shut-down (again) etc. I tried all of this again, and again, in various permutations, and with plenty of waiting — nothing. Frozen as a dead parrot!

So, I reset the System Management Controller — that worked :-)

To reset the SMC: Shutdown; plug in to mains power; hold down shift-ctrl-alt (alt is aka option) on the left side of the keyboard, and press the power key once; then release the keys, wait 5 seconds, and press the power key to restart. Effective magic!

The SMC includes the Power Management Unit (PMU) you may be familiar with from other devices.

15 comments:

College Term Papers said...

I really like this blog, It's always nice when you can not only be informed, but also get knowledge, from these type of blog, nice entry. Thanks

Kyle Pate said...

Thank you so much! I just bought my mother a MBA and she called me with this problem.

Anonymous said...

Nice one!

Allan said...

Much appreciated!

InterpretingCR said...

Thenk you soooo much!
I was in the middle of a course and this happened to me. Looked you up in my iPad, and voila! It worked perfectly.

You saved my job.

Hotel Indigo Nashville said...

Really great work. Great info! Thanks for the nice blog.

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much!! I was desperate. I'm keeping this site on my bookmark.

Apple elementary said...

Thank you so much you saved my mom her mac froze and found this AMAZING blog and they now call me '' The Apple Genus thank you so much!!! I <3 this blog!!! I am telling all of my friends if the have mac problems and to my teacher who has a mac air! I am going to be the apple master of the school!

RS said...

THX!!!!!!!!! saved my life!

RS said...

THX!

Anonymous said...

Still works a treat, thanks

Unknown said...

Thanks for this!

Unknown said...

Thanks for this!

Anonymous said...

I love you for this post. You saved me from such an embarrassment. Bless you. PK

Luis A, Espinoza said...

WOOOOOOOOW. THANKS THANKS THANKS