could not get PC back from 'standby-sleep'

[Santuzzo]

Hi,

I have my PC's power setting set to 'PC going to sleep after 30mins of no action'.
And usually when it goes to sleep, all I have to do is press a key or move the mouse or press the mouse button and then the PC 'wakes up' and I need to type in my pass word.

Today, though, I could not get it back, no matter what I did, the screen stayed black, even when I turned off the PC completely with the power button and when I hit the reset button I got no screen. The monitor is ok, its power button light was on, it just did not receive any signal.

Then I pulled the power plug on the PC (I had to go to work), and when I got back home, I turned on the PC and it was back to normal, but apparently it had still not booted down (eventhough it was disconnected from electricity) and it came back to the same screen I was at before this happened (same windows/programs open).

Isn't this very strange?

If anybody has an idea what could be the cause of this, I'd appreciate any kind of help!

Thanks,
Lars

 

[-RockMan-]

Don't know what to say about your power saving problem, I do recommend you try this.
Go to start>controlpanel? hardware and sound> and go to power options.
Now for the fun part that will stop your pc from permanently sleeping.
Go to balanced power options, now from there look at the menu closely.
Have advanced settings shut off your monitor after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Next leave hdd alone do not let it sleep, but go to the option for the processer and have it slow down "gently" to hibernating mode.

Next setup your computer to wakeup by lan network or wireless device just in case something needs to run during the day and excute a task.

Now if all this works out, let it do a hibernation task again, come back to it later and unplug the machine.
Reason why I say this, to make sure your computer is not using stored memory to hibernate from it's last session and will do a normal boot up to windows.
When your power is off for more than an hour or so, it will do this, if not something else could be faulting it to make you have this problem.

Let me know how it works out for you.

 

[Santuzzo]

Thank you very much for your reply and your advice! And sorry for my late reaction.
The problem seems to have solved itself, at least so far I did not have it re-occurring, so I hope it is fine now. Still, I think it is somewhat strange that the PC would not come back form sleeping-mode....

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

Sleep mode can be unreliable on some PC's, I've had my netbook refuse to come out of sleep mode before (it enters sleep mode, the standby LED is flashing, but nothing will get it back and the only option is to power off and back on). It can be an update, a driver, a new software, a setting change, etc. that causes it and can be hard to track down the problem. Also, if it came back to where it was after it was unplugged then it was not in sleep mode. There is a mode called hibernate which sleeps to hard drive and completely powers off the PC (generally when sleeping the power LED flashes, hibernate completely shuts off the PC). There is an option called hybrid sleep that will hibernate after so many minutes of normal sleep which is somewhere in the advanced settings.

 

[Santuzzo]

Sleep mode can be unreliable on some PC's, I've had my netbook refuse to come out of sleep mode before (it enters sleep mode, the standby LED is flashing, but nothing will get it back and the only option is to power off and back on). It can be an update, a driver, a new software, a setting change, etc. that causes it and can be hard to track down the problem. Also, if it came back to where it was after it was unplugged then it was not in sleep mode. There is a mode called hibernate which sleeps to hard drive and completely powers off the PC (generally when sleeping the power LED flashes, hibernate completely shuts off the PC). There is an option called hybrid sleep that will hibernate after so many minutes of normal sleep which is somewhere in the advanced settings.

Thank you!

I always thought hibernating and sleep mode was the same thing.

Anyway, seeing that this is a common thing, it does not seem to be a serious issue, I suppose.

Lars

 

[gunderscorewil]

No thread-jacking intended: But I came here to ask about and find a solution to a VERY similar issue with my HP 6510b with Win7.

~70% of the time i would sleep it with no issue but the other 30% it would come back to a black/blank screen and the only way to fix it was to force-off.

THEN one day nothing would fix it. It would turn on and then i could hear fans and my HD light would blink orange but NO display...not even the boot screen where i can press f8 or f12 (BIOS?). And when i force off again, i cant hear the audible "click" that i always hear on ANY comp that i force-off.

My friend, who is really good with comps, says its the graphics card/driver.

So i just want to let you know that: yea, you fixed it for now, but its likely to get way worse in the future.

Also, i would really like an answer to this question, as it pertains to individuals who get black/blank screens 100% of the time, but I'm not sure if it is appropriate to start a new thread

 

[MindoverMaster]

Could be that the rest of the system wakes up but the GFX. I would then look to make sure the power volts are OK. If not that, it is a Windows/driver problem.