Vista - Does sleep ever work on a reliable basis?

I used to be able to put the computer to sleep by selecting "Sleep" at the
shut down. The monitors would go into standby mode and the PC would turn
off all the fans and be quiet except for a blinking LED on the front.
Moving the mouse would bring it back. Having the computer go to sleep on its
own didn't really ever work.

Then for a few days, the computer would sleep as it should have if left
alone and it could also be commanded to sleep and all was well with the world
for a brief time. Computer not running away, monitors on standby, just like
it should be....

....For about three days. Now it will sometimes sleep on its own, but good
luck telling it to sleep. It will put the monitors on standby, but it will
NEVER come back by moving the mouse, touching the keyboard or doing a dance
in front of it. It has to be powered down by holding the power button in for
5 seconds.

When restarted it says "resuming windows" and everything seems to come back
fine and how it was left OR it gives and error that Windows didn't shut down
properly the last time plus options to start in a different mode in which
case nothing is there as it was left.

So, what is going on? Will sleep ever work like it is supposed to or should
I just start powering down and doing a cold boot each day and save myself the
time of trying to figure out what this OS is doing from day to day that
screws things up?

I have read volumes of posts and articles about sleep and how sleep worked
perfectly in the Beta stage of Vista, but seems to have been totally fubared
by the time Vista was released on the rest of the world and post after post
about people losing sleep over their PC having no reliable sleep function.
I'd like to think these, along with the Apple commercials, are just overblown
exaggerations, but I'm really beginning to think Vista is all show and no
substance that was released at least two years too early.

What is up with sleep/hibernate or whatever else you want to call it?

Bart

Hi Bart,

Check through these common sleep mode problems to see if you find out what is causing yours. Have you changed anything or installed anything before you started having sleep mode problems?

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/63...-problems.html

Shawn

"brink" wrote:
Yeah, I've been through that article a dozen times. Initially, that's how I
corrected one of the problems back when I got it to work, if only briefly.

Of course things are installed all the time. Hardly a day goes by when MS
doesn't have some kind of update. Seriously, if that is what is screwing
things up then I really have to wonder what the hell is going on.

Last night this was the sequence of events:

Used computer. Walked away and got iinterested in a show on TV. Came back
an hour later to find the monitors on standby, but the HD and fans just
working away as usual. Had to turn off and restart to get it back.

Used computer for another 30 minutes. Left it for 30 minutes, came back and
it had put the monitors on standbye and turned off the fans and HD. Just
like it should have.

Woke system and used it for another hour. Selected "sleep" when I was
finsihed. For the first time in the last 6 days it went to sleep properly.

So, you see, there is no consistant operation here.

Bart

Bart,

I can see why it is so hard to track down the problem now. When it is acting up, check in Task Manager to see what programs or processes are running. I know that when I have my AV program doing a scan or when Windows Update is doing a automatic install, the computer will still put the monitor in standby but the computer will still be running until the AV program or Windows Update finishes. Perhaps, you have something similar happening.

Shawn

"brink" wrote:
Well, that could be difficult. When it goes into its "I will not wake up
mode" I can't see any processes and having to turn it off and back on
probably doesn't give a very good picture of what was there before. Second,
I am not any kind of guru so 90% of what processes are going on I will know
nothing about.

I do not allow any automated updates. I sit here while it does any of them.
I have also turned off the indexing on the drives because those were going
all the time.

I just can't believe the whole sleep process is this unreliable and I really
do not like to be doing cold boots all the time and/or having it freeze up.
Something is going to end up failing badly at this rate.

This has been a problem since day one when I bought it at the end of October
last year. I thought things would have become stable by now. No such luck.

Bart

You're not alone. I've given up on using sleep mode. I just leave the
computer on 24/7.


"bartman" <bartman@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4558CAB8-D118-4314-A631-2E44C84110EA@xxxxxx

Bart,

I suppose you can try installing the SP1 RC Release to see if it will stabilize the sleep mode for you. If not, you can always uninstall it does more harm than good.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/11...sh-public.html

Shawn