Computer stuck in "sleep" mode

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[Slowpoke47]

Dell desktop, W7 HP SP1 x64.  We typically start this machine in the early a.m. and use it periodically through the day.  When not in use, we use the “sleep” function.  Today the system would not restart from “sleep” mode, no response at all.  Tried esc, ctrl-alt-del, as well as the enter key with no response.  Eventually got restarted via the power button on the case, which I know is not a good idea.  There was a recovery screen (black) with options for restart and shut down, and the ensuing restart was strange- all previously open tabs showed in duplicate and some other oddities, but finally everything now seems normal.  Except that- the machine now responds to keyboard inputs somewhat faster than before this problem!

So my question is whether there is a method for addressing my original situation, failure to awake from “sleep” mode.

• This topic was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by Slowpoke47.

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I had this problem with a new Dell Laptop after a Windows 10 Update.  It was a work computer so I can’t say what Windows 10 build was installed on the system or what updates were being installed by system administrators.  However, they simply removed all the power saving features (since I typically have the system plugged into a wall outlet) and I have yet to experience issues.  In your case, I suspect your system may have received an update before going to sleep and when you tried to wake it up, the system refused to cooperate.

Your system may have experienced something similar.  If you don’t want to remove power saving features from your system, consider changing active hours (i.e., the times when Windows thinks you are inactive and it’s OK to install updates).

Fotafm

 

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Slowpoke47

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fotafm wrote:

I had this problem with a new Dell Laptop after a Windows 10 Update. It was a work computer so I can’t say what Windows 10 build was installed on the system or what updates were being installed by system administrators.

This situation is somewhat different- a LAN in a home office environment- Note that the OS is Windows 7- and we are the “administrators.”

That said, I didn’t mention that I did disconnect power to the PC during my recovery efforts.  At the time this ploy did not help, but perhaps I should have left the power off for a longer time period.

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Hi Slowpoke,

In early May 2019, I decided to start occasionally using sleep mode on my Win7 desktop computer either at night or when I went to work in the morning. At the time, I was updated through March 2019 (Group B). I have had two types of random failures with sleep mode. The first type of random failure was that Win7 appeared to enter sleep mode, yet the computer’s hardware did not go to sleep. The second type of random failure was that the computer would not come out of sleep mode, and I had to kill power to the computer and then reboot.

Using Nirsoft BlueScreenView, I saw that the issue appears to be either in the kernel itself or in a driver running under the kernel when the computer tried to come out of sleep mode. The bug check string is DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. The driver with virtually the same time stamp as the time recorded when the kernel crashed is hal.dll. Both ntosknl.exe and hal.dll are dated 2019-03-05 (installed by the March security only update).

I have since updated through the May 2019 security only updates, yet I havn’t tested to see if the random sleep issues still persist. Microsoft has been messing with the kernel and related core DLLs such as hal.dll six ways from Sunday since the beginning of the year.

Slowpoke, what are the most recent Windows Updates which you have installed? Forget about IE or .NET updates, as those are not related to this sleep issue.

Best regards,

–GTP

 

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Slowpoke47

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Hi SlowPoke, You did not say what your DELL computer is with the exact model/name of that Dell.

Dell drivers and patches are “so simple” with the Dell site, you may have a patch waiting for you there for that exact model.

Please give the model/name/number or TAG number on the back.

For now, here is a DELL page on your issue. It is very general, so that is why we need the model.

Steps for Fixing Computers that Do Not Wake Up or Resume from Suspend / Hibernate Mode but Power On
https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln122264/steps-for-fixing-computers-that-do-not-wake-up-or-resume-from-suspend-hibernate-mode-but-power-on?lang=en

Thank you.

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Slowpoke47

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GoneToPlaid wrote:

Slowpoke, what are the most recent Windows Updates which you have installed? Forget about IE or .NET updates, as those are not related to this sleep issue.

Thanks for your detailed response.  As a non-tech user, I carefully followed the list of B updates here:  https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/2000003-ongoing-list-of-group-b-monthly-updates-for-win7-and-8-1/ posted by PKCano.  Since I had not been up to speed on the A vs. B differences, I started from the oldest on the list and progressed in order to and including the May 2019 B update.  I had to install the vast majority of these patches, which I did in order, as advised.

I finished this project on 5/22, two days before the sleep mode problem, although in the interim we continued our practice described earlier of using sleep mode with no issues.  To answer your question, I went back to that post today to see which patches were security and not ie, in order to compare the list to installed updates.  I find that the KB numbers have been changed, and I cannot find in the listing the updates I installed.  FWIW, here are the updates installed on 5/22/19, at this point do not know which are B vs. ie, as the Installed Updates screen does not differentiate (all have the KB prefix):

KB4343899                              KB4466536                                  KB4489873

4343205                                     4471328                                       4493448

4457145                                      4480960                                      4483435

4457426                                      4480965                                      4499175

4462915                                      4491113                                         4498206

4467106                                      4489885

Now that I see the revised list on that post, I don’t know what if anything I should do.  Running down the original list took several hours for each of two machines.  It would be quite a chore to go back and delete all those updates and replace them with the newer numbers, and perhaps they could even be changed again.

GoneToPlaid wrote:

Using Nirsoft BlueScreenView, I saw that the issue appears to be either in the kernel itself or in a driver running under the kernel when the computer tried to come out of sleep mode. The bug check string is DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE. The driver with virtually the same time stamp as the time recorded when the kernel crashed is hal.dll. Both ntosknl.exe and hal.dll are dated 2019-03-05 (installed by the March security only update).

This terminology is beyond my ability to understand.  Could it be that the freeze was a glitch that may not repeat?

 

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Here is the list of the updates you installed:

KB4343899 — 2018-08-10 security only update
KB4457145 — 2018-09-10 security only update
KB4462915 — 2018-10-05 security only update
KB4467106 — 2018-11-12 security only update
KB4471328 — 2018-12-07 security only update
KB4480960 — 2019-01-04 security only update
KB4489885 — 2019-03-10 security only update
KB4493448 — 2019-04-05 security only update
KB4499175 — 2019-05-11 security only update
KB4343205 — 2018-08-14 IE cumulative security update
KB4457426 — 2018-09-11 IE cumulative security update
KB4466536 — 2018-11-13 IE cumulative security update
KB4480965 — 2019-01-08 IE cumulative security update
KB4483435 — no match. Typo?
KB4489873 — 2019-03-12 IE cumulative security update
KB4491113 — 2019-02-19 IE cumulative security update
KB4498206 — 2019-05-14 IE cumulative security update

Regarding the BlueScreenView results, I basically am saying that the sleep issues appear to be either within the Windows OS kernel or in one of the device drivers which run under the kernel. The Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) driver seems to be the likely culprit.

The upshot is that I think that the sleep issues are something which Microsoft will have to fix. Don’t uninstall any of the security updates since you need them. For the time being, I recommend powering down your computer instead of putting it to sleep.

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Slowpoke47

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GoneToPlaid wrote:

KB4483435 — no match. Typo?

Yep, should have typed 4493435.

GoneToPlaid wrote:

The upshot is that I think that the sleep issues are something which Microsoft will have to fix.

Seems like MS would not have much incentive to fix a problem of their own making in an OS they are trying hard to get rid of.  Thanks for your assistance!

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[Slowpoke47]

anonymous wrote:

Please give the model/name/number or TAG number on the back.

Dell Inspiron 519, Service tag 8BPVJG1  Thanks for posting.

Edit- just took a quick look at the link you posted, seems to be aimed at laptops.  This machine is a desktop.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by Slowpoke47.

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Hi Slowpoke anonymous #1767376 here.

The Dell site only had a BIOS update available for you tag number. There are other updates for the DELL 519 but not specifically for your PC.

Support for Inspiron 519
https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/servicetag/8bpvjg1/drivers

GTP has good ideas as do others here. You may be stuck with running diagnostics or searching the DELL support pages for Sleep problems. I saw several listed but you do need those more focused on your Dell model. Many of the sleep issues were back in 2011 / 2012.

Sorry it didn’t have a huge list of drivers. I worked on a friends old Dell laptop and it had a bunch of Dell drivers and patches to fix odd issues he had. It was all for naught. He zapped his power supply when he got home and hooked it up, so I never got any results of all my updating.

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Slowpoke47

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Hi Slowpoke anonymous #1767376 here. In further searching I found some things you may try more for diagnostics or a double checking of your settings.

This dell site, the person ran a command line request to see what was seen in Power Configuration.

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/Inspiron-15-5559-won-t-wake-from-sleep/td-p/4759223
“I opened a command line and started looking at powercfg – after checking compatible devices (HID compliant mouse and keyboard were listed) I entered the following:
powercfg /devicequery wake_armed (to see what devices can wake the laptop)
Result: NONE

So there are no devices able to wake the machine from sleep mode, so i entered:
powercfg /deviceenablewake “HID Compliant Keyboard”
Result: You do not have permission to enable or disable device wake”

You might want to try those commands and see what results you get.

Also, double check your BIOS for allowing wake from USB (under Advanced Power settings).

https://www.dell.com/community/Desktops-General-Read-Only/XPS-8910-Sleep-Function-Enable-USB-Wake-Support-in-the-BIOS/m-p/5080318#M1014879
“I checked with one of my Dell tech contacts and there is a “USB Wake Support (S3)” option in the BIOS setup but it is Disabled by default. So you should make sure that it is Enabled to let the mouse or keyboard will wake the PC from sleep. Don’t change anything else in BIOS setup.” One person said it worked for them.

Controlling which devices will wake the computer out of sleep
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=23473

Hope this helps. Let us know.

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Slowpoke47

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My thanks to “anonymous” and GoneToPlaid for the time and effort to respond to my question.  I will look into the posted info on the Dell site shortly, too busy for the next few days.  This machine is now 10 years old, and, while I have heard of this sleep problem from others, this is the first time it has happened to us.  I’m hoping that it was just that isolated an event, and feel comfortable deferring troubleshooting while I get the rest of my to-do list caught up.  I’ll post back with my findings.  Again, thank you.

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Touching base here- Looked at the links by “anonymous” and concluded, as as posted above, that the risk of unintended consequences of my altering the BIOS is acceptable if the original problem recurs, and I will keep this thread bookmarked.  But on the strength of one incident, I’m not ready to take that chance.

Again, my appreciation for the research and advice.

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I have previously mentioned that MS has been really mucking around with the Win7 kernel and related kernel drivers. Recently, I installed the May security only update, to see if this update would resolve the intermittent problems which I have been experiencing when I commanded my Win7 computer to sleep, or to come out of sleep. There is no improvement. My main Win7 computer, during the 10 days, successfully went to sleep 3 times, and came out of sleep all three times when commanded to do so. Yet just yesterday, this computer did not successfully enter sleep mode. A hard reboot was required in order to recover.

The “beauty” of this is that no blue screen occurred when trying to successfully sleep, and that no event was recorded in Event Viewer since, well, that had already been killed. Thus MS doesn’t have a clue that they have seriously mucked things up, due to what apparently must be a random timing issue.

Sleep mode, for some Windows 7 users, is randomly broken. Likewise, coming out of sleep mode for some users is also randomly broken with a resulting black screen.

This sort of thing likely would have been caught in testing by MS’s former Windows Update Quality Control Team. They no longer exist since Nadella fired them.

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Cybertooth, Slowpoke47

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As of today, no further “sleep” issues here, and we have resumed using that function on a daily basis.  I often feel like one of those blind men from the old fable who were trying to understand what an elephant is, as I engage the cyberworld.  Most recently Gmail has been behaving oddly and FireFox has been omitting random elements from web page displays.  But I just accept these hiccups as business as usual.

My longer-term plan is still to abandon MS in favor of Linux.  Already have a new hard drive with Mint loaded and operational, will be reinstalling that drive shortly and keeping dual-boot functionality with W7 until I’m more experienced with the new OS and needed files are transferred.

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