Comments on: Windows Vista Crashes, BSODs, and System Failures on Hibernate, Resume, and Wake

By: Tom Cunningham

Tom Cunningham — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:34:54 +0000

In reply to Bob Stratton –

It dounds to me like you have a BIOS setting which is putting your machine to sleep. I have seen similar issues on a variety of systems, and if it still sleeps after disabling hibernation and standby, it is most likely that the BIOS is taking over and forcing the issue. There may be some compatibility issue which keeps Vista from reacting properly, so you may need to disable sleep in the BIOS, as well.

Contrary to suggestions that most “Professionals” or serious computer users do not shutdown, I don;t think that can be generalized. Each person has a personal preference based on software requirements, laziness, or a host of other quirks which guide thair choice of power usage.

Personally, I try to balance my power bill with what is going on. I typically shut down when not in use, and only run for long periods when doing system maintenenace (updates, defrag, etc) or when batch processing large video or audio files which needs to run uninterrupted. But that’s just me.

One concern I have which keeps me rebooting periodically is to make sure it WILL reboot. This is true of PCs at home, as well as production servers I am responsible for which might run for weeks at a time, and then not come up when restarted, because someone changed something without proper documentation.

But I digress — Check your BIOS settigs for sleep functions…

By: Bob Stratton

Bob Stratton — Sat, 03 May 2008 21:19:41 +0000

My HP Pavilion PC a6130n never boots up after hibernation until I have physically unplugged it. Usually unplugging it for ONLY an hour or two will not work. Unplugging overnight USUALLY works. When I get lucky and unplugging overnight does work, I am able to reboot only after telling Vista to reboot from scratch and delete the information that was saved so the machine could wake up from hibernation.

I was told by my friendly HP dealer that this problem is very common and that I would just have to live with it until MS comes out with a fix, but that in the meantime I could log in as the administrator and turn off hibernation. I did that but the problem persists with no noticeable change whatever.

Any suggestions. I can’t sit by the computer and type something every few minutes to keep it from going into hibernation and I can’t afford to be without my computer overnight every time it does hibernate.

By: Bob Stratton

Bob Stratton — Sat, 03 May 2008 20:53:34 +0000

By: Sam A

Sam A — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:20:15 +0000

How odd. Prior to Vista SP1 x4 I could sleep, hibernate all day long. After SP1, if I try to manually sleep, my laptop looks like it’s going to sleep, then it reboots. If I let the power options timers run, I sleep just fine.

If I try to hibernate manually, again, my laptoop lookslike it’s going to hibernate, then it reboots instead.

I do have the hiberfil.sys file; I’ve tried powercfg -h off & -on again, no luck.

The only thing I can think of doing is deleting that file, then trying to recreate it.

All in all, quite odd!

By: Margaret

Margaret — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:14:40 +0000

here’s another hotfix posted by MS on March 4, 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949537/en-us

“When you try to put a Windows Vista-based computer into hibernation (S4), and the computer has multiple USB devices connected to it, the computer stops responding”

unclear from the text, but it seems this happens when you try to use a Bluetooth device. I experienced this problem yesterday.

The other hotfixes helped a tiny bit, but then I encountered another problem in which I’m apparently SOL.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305689/en-us
“Laptop Computer Reaches 100 Percent CPU Usage After You Remove It from the Docking Station”
it happens to me in sleep mode too, not just hibernate.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:54:31 +0000

Well i did a little research on my own and sound a solution. I found a website cant remember the site URL but it stated that if i when into power options and created my own power scheme and fiddled with the sleep options and got it to work the way i wanted it to

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:31:23 +0000

I don’t know if i passed it reading most of these articles, But my problem is when i use windows vista orb/start/ball whatever to put my system to SLEEP only the screen turns black and everything still seems to be running. I’ve noticed that if my laptop is unplugged (running on battery)it will then go into a SLEEP mode where the Hard Drive LED slowly pulses and was wondering if anybody has a resolution for this little problem i am having.
Dell Insirion 1420
Intel Core Duo CPU
T5450 @ 1.66 GHz 1.67 GHz
2 GHz RAM
32-Bit
Windows Vista Home Premium

Thanks..

By: מתנפחים

מתנפחים — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:16:27 +0000

that’s why i still on win xp sp2 the best windows ever (with 2049385 bugs only)

By: Chantell

Chantell — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:45:44 +0000

Ever since the start of February I have had a lot of problems with my laptop, especially the sleep mode. Its a compaq presario c700, bought in early November new. It has always been really really slow, definately no 6 second boot up time… I’m lucky if it starts in 90 seconds but that is another issue in entirety. I recently upgraded my memory from 1 gig to 2 gigs thinking that would help with everything. Nope. Now I’m having issues with the sleep and because it happened right around the time that upgraded I was thinking that it was faulty memory. So here is the issue, it will not go into sleep mode. With in 30 seconds of shutting the lid, or 3-4 minutes of inactivity it shuts down completely, and then when you go to resume it comes up with a post saying something along the lines of Windows did not shut down properly and gives you the option to start in Safe mode or Start normally. I have tried the Hybrid Sleep which I think defeats the purpose of sleep. It basicly restarts itself and skips the log in process. Is this an update issue? And if so could someone please give me some tips on removing the affected update? Thanks!

By: Shawn Muder

Shawn Muder — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:09:47 +0000

Not sure you want to do that, since SP1 is about to be released in a week or so. Try and see if downloading and installing SP1 will improve/fix the situation.

By: myardor

myardor — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 15:40:56 +0000

Just bought another puter, why? on sale. $478 delivered.
Its a Dell, dude!
Inspiron 530. Core 2 Quad, Q6600, 1Gb RAM (slow, will upgrade later)
Will not take more than 4GB on MB but can live with that since am not upgrading
to 64 bit OS anytime soom.
Does not take IDE, only SATA, guess its ok, so system wont use slow HDs

Came with Vista Home Basic
Went to Craigslist and bought a Dell reinstalltion CD,
says Windows XP/SP2, cost 15 bucks
Reformatted the HD and installed XP. No activation, no key required, no hassles
Runs good, so far. Hope I am legal
So will have 2 puters, one running XP PRO other running Vista Home Premium.

My problems listed above are not as often occurring.
Seems all of the updates ( all up to date/current) might have made the problems less of a pain. Don’t have to reboot as often. Before, it was a few times a DAY
Now it one or two, a week.

Did turn hibernate/sleep off on the Vista puter.

I like both OSes. Vista has more eye candy too much protection.

By: Catman

Catman — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 06:12:12 +0000

Well, all I can say is that EVERY SINGLE THING that he is saying is happening to me on my brand new Dell laptop. Absolutely will not return from sleep mode. Infuriating. About ready to go back to XP.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:39:58 +0000

HERE’S A WAY TO MAKE VISTA BOOT WHEN IT WON’T WAKE AFTER SLEEP/HIBERNATE:
1. Turn off computer.
2. Remove one of the RAM chips (or change to a different one)
3. Start the computer.
4. Windows will inform you that RAM has changed and ask if you want to delete the restoration data. Confirm that you want to delete it.
5. Start in normal mode.
After it reboots you can do a regular shut down, replace the RAM and restart as usual.
This is a bull*** problem that no other company could get away with. Imagine if every single car that a major manufacturer made had a problem where it wouldn’t start if it was turned off while the lights were on or something similar. There would be a major recall and/or law suit. Where’s the lawsuit agains Microsoft for this lame problem?
At least the “fix” above will get people’s computers running so they can email their attorneys/congressmen etc.

By: me

me — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:58:48 +0000

about a week ago, i installed the SP1 update. ironically, it brought back all the problems I had. when i got my laptop everything was working fine, then one day, the sleep and hibernate would not wake up, i fixed that by basically uninstalling all the updates for vista… the sp1 brought that back so i uninstalled it. to me, there are still problems with my computer to the point that i SERIOUSLY cannot tell the difference with SP1…other than that it recognizes 4gb of ram though it still utilizes 3gb. but for me, problems still exist and annoyed me so i uninstalled it. i was thinking about re-installing it after the launch or a month after.

By: Myardor

Myardor — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:46:51 +0000

Bought a brand new Gateway GT5630E, Upgraded to 4 Gigs of RAM
Nothing else done. Win Vista Home Premium
System hangs up..after i walk away, after a few minutes.
I come back and monitor is off. I can hear a noise like its trying to turn on the monitor, wakeup. Nothing I do wakes it up.

I turn it off and then on..it boots up but I can’t run
control panel, can’t run personalize to change settings on screen saver, wallpaper,etc
Can’t run any games from the games folder.

Only solution is to reboot, go to F8 and do a restore!
But do a restore 2-20 times daily? I use the ‘puter all day long trading.