Am I going to sleep? I have to log in a lot

TuckerdogAVL

Registered
My mac is running 10.6.3 and the other is 10.5. Recently (like in the past 2 weeks), what is happening with both computers is they both will seemingly go into sleep mode after the predetermined time chosen in Energy Saver. And, we can put them to sleep manually.

Both do not have "Wake for Admin" chosen.
Both do have "Log on to XYZ" chosen.

If the computer goes to sleep after the Energy Saver settings go into effect, when you return from sleep, you are at the Log In screen.

If you put the computer to sleep manually - overnight - with the internet turned off - when you return the next morning and take the computer out of sleep mode - the Log in Window is waiting.

So, is the computer going to sleep? Or just the monitor? Or neither?
They "sound" like they have gone to sleep....but are they?

I do have to return from a black screen to get to the Log In Screen. So, I'm assuming they are going to sleep. Is this a special security mode that is now built into......something? (Remember, one is the old OSX, the other is Snow Leopard.

And we do upgrade whenever we get a message to.

Thanks.
 
If you prefer to not need a password after sleep, turn that option off (you're looking in the wrong pref pane, I guess)
in Snow Leopard - System Preferences/Security pane, then General tab - uncheck 'Require Password after sleep or screensaver.
in Leopard or older - same setting, but may be different location in the Security pane.
Snow Leopard has additional options for this, compared to older OS X versions.
 
Hmmmmm....what if that choice isn't marked? In Security, I see that choice but it is unclicked. Box is not chosen on the 10.4.11 computer or the computer with Snow Leopard (Of course, this doesn't surprise me: things like in Word, where you can choose to either "choose whole word or phrase when editing" or not, and I chose NOT to have it chose the whole world, doesn't work either. but, I expect that in Microsoft software).

:-)
 
Ah, I missed in your first post that you said that when you wake up the Mac, it's at the login screen, which means that you are actually logged out? That password window for the "Password required after sleep, etc" is a different type of window than the login window. For example, there's no way to change to a different user at that point.
If you log out now, do you get the exact same login window that you see after you wake up your Mac? That is, are you actually logged out, and not just a password entry window?

In that same Security pref pane - do you have the setting checked for 'Logout after x minutes of inactivity?"
 
If you uncheck that setting - you can see if you no longer log out automatically, and that's it. It's set to log out after 60 minutes, so if you want your system to log out, then leave it set, or change to some other time interval.
That's a setting that you would have turned on at some point. OS X does not turn that on as a default setting.
 
That was that. Do'h! (The other was set for 45 minutes. We don't recall actually setting this recently, but you never know. I was probably tooling around and checked it when doing some maintenance...and forgot about it). Thanks so much.
 
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