# unplugged my new imac while asleep



## franken (May 5, 2004)

Hiya, had to unplug my new imac and I assumed that the power on button was also a power off button, but now i read that its just asleep. Am I likely to have damaged it? I assume they can handle that ok? 

Yours, slightly worried from England


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## etaf (Oct 2, 2003)

should be OK - only way you will know is to switch it on ..

I'll move to the apple forum


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## franken (May 5, 2004)

cheers, it seems fine. There was one time when it said it had to shut down, this was when I was plugging something in like headphones I think. That had me a bit worried. Since then its been good as gold.

Thinking about it, I unplugged it about 3 times in standby, while trying to sort an issue out with new speakers having background noise. Im bloody annoyed with myself, but then again I dont think its unreasonable to assume the on button is also the off button?


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## etaf (Oct 2, 2003)

I dont know MACs very well - only played with a couple of imacs - can you change the behavouir of how the on/off switch works - so it shuts down
I know windows does not like being switched off - read a few posts here and you will see the - "switched the PC off without shutting down and now we just get a black screen" type stuff

So it would be better to be able to shut down rather than switch off anyway


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## franken (May 5, 2004)

yeah, will have a look cheers


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## Yankee Rose (Jul 14, 1999)

Pressing and holding the power button in for 5+ seconds will shut a Mac down.


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## franken (May 5, 2004)

oh, cheers, useful to know


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## kayote (Nov 3, 2006)

Doesn't that shut it down hard, same as pulling the power plug?

If you want to shut it off, just select "Shut Down" from the Apple Menu. It'll shut itself down cleanly.


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## Yankee Rose (Jul 14, 1999)

kayote said:


> Doesn't that shut it down hard, same as pulling the power plug?


Yes, but the discussion here was in regards to the use of the power button in terms of sleep/shutting down, so wanted to mention this.


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## aka Brett (Nov 25, 2008)

I would be careful about unplugging,bad shut downs etc...its like driving through a construction zone......sooner or later you will get a flat


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## franken (May 5, 2004)

So is it maybe better to shut down fully every day, just in case of the rare event of a power cut?


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## Squarl (Mar 9, 2010)

franken said:


> So is it maybe better to shut down fully every day, just in case of the rare event of a power cut?


You could definitely do that but in my opinion that's like always carrying an umbrella just in case of rain. I leave my Macs on most the time. I try and reboot them all once a week just due to old habits. If it's really storming outside I might shut everything down in case there is a power outage but otherwise I wouldn't worry about it. The few time's the power may go out isn't great but like it was said before It's only after so many times that it can become a problem.


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## franken (May 5, 2004)

oh, ok, cheers Squarl


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## etaf (Oct 2, 2003)

I would always shut down - that rare power cut - and even living in town in Surrey we probably get one a year ish - recently had about 4 powercuts - and that could be expensive.

But apart from powercuts - my friends washing machine tripped the fusebox, they switched back on and it tripped again - result the iMAC was on and it cost £350 to replace the system board


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## aka Brett (Nov 25, 2008)

I killed a laptop by removing the battery
I added ram powered up..the bios took longer than usual to load...i took the extra stick out,,bios loaded fast..i put the stick back in...bios took several seconds longer as before....sometimes it might take 30 seconds..but once finished all was well...however a couple days later it didnt finish loading the bios...about 10 or 15 mintutes later i made the decision to remove the battery....its now junk


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## Squarl (Mar 9, 2010)

I'm going to go ahead and say removing your battery wasn't what killed your laptop. Does the unit still power on but not boot up? 

Also Installing ram does in fact increase load time. When your unit posts (well starting) it does a quick memory test. The more memory the longer the test. Certainly not 15minutes but noticeably longer when run side by side to an identical unit with less ram.

If your unit was stalling on a loading/startup screen I'd put money on your hard drive or OS. Maybe even improperly installed ram (were you taking static precautions?) causing damage to the board in a bad case. But not removing your battery.

And if your worried about an electrical issue (I have seen the rare computer-death by household electrical issue). Use a Surge protector and not just a power bar.

The problems with removing power from units like these can strike different areas. I'd be willing to say the circuitry less. An area it can hit hard are with hard drives. Hard drives are designed to "spin down" and have "safe areas" where the head can sit without damaging the platters. Think of a needle on a record player sitting on a record. This is literally exactly what goes on in an average hard drive. If power is cut or even the unit is bumped suddenly this can cause movement in the head/arm. If it hit the platter this will damage the drive and down the road cause data loss/corruption or boot up issues. If a hard drive spins down the "needle" moves away from the platter so that damage isn't caused. This also occurs when the units Sleep light is pulsing.

You may notice when you put a unit to sleep right away the light may not begin pulsing but will stay solid. This is the unit saving all information to the hard drive before it spins the drive down. Once the light begins pulsing the hard drive has moved the head to a safe position and if the power is cut at this point less damage is likely to occur.

This is a single example of what can happen. Still to prepare yourself for every situation would be overdoing things in my opinion. If you don't mind shutting the unit down every time you're away that's certainly not going to cause a problem. Like I've mentioned though I leave mine running unless there's a large storm. Sometimes I just have to many on going projects and files out to desire saving/closing and reopening them next time.


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## aka Brett (Nov 25, 2008)

Squarl said:


> I'm going to go ahead and say removing your battery wasn't what killed your laptop. Does the unit still power on but not boot up?
> 
> Also Installing ram does in fact increase load time. When your unit posts (well starting) it does a quick memory test. The more memory the longer the test. Certainly not 15minutes but noticeably longer when run side by side to an identical unit with less ram.
> 
> ...


It never would post after that....the most i could get out of it was one of the status lights to flash a few times...I would have to wait several minutes to be able to get it to flash again...i tried a substitute hdd.
other ram even going as low as 256 but no luck....i remove the battery when working on a laptop...I take an extension cord shove a nail in the ground reach over and touch it once in a while..and work on a wooden table...I try to keep my feet in one spot....I really liked that laptop....it was not a good day for me


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