Windows 7: Cannot exit sleep mode

First the system specs:
Intel DX48BT2 motherboard
Intel QX9770 3.2 GHz Core 2 Extreme
Nvidia GTX 295
8GB of OCZ 1333MHz DDR3 Gold Series RAM
30GB OCZ Vertex SSD
1TB Samsung HD103UJ HDD
Windows 7 SP1 Public Beta



For two nights in a row whenever I have put my computer to sleep before I go to bed it has not been able to exit sleep mode the following morning. The screens get no signal even the the computer is on. I should note that I have hibernation disabled on this computer due to the fact that the SSD boot drive is so small and an 8GB hibernation file would be too large. Instead I enter standby. I should note that last night as I was entering sleep mode I accidently hit a key which caused it to come right back out of sleep mode before the fans had turned off. This makes me think that it could be a hardware problem. What do you guys think?

Hi there freelancer91!
If I put my own computer to sleep, I get the same problem. The workaround I found is...
1. Close the PC
2. Disconnect the computer
3. Open the case
4. Switch to another graphic card
5. Connect the computer
6. Upon booting, you may have a BSOD. This is normal. Let it reboot if so. If not...
7. When Windows has finished from starting, uninstall the previous drivers. Close the computer.
8. Replace the graphic card again with its original one.
9. Close the case and reconnect the computer.
10. Re-install the drivers and you are good to go.
11. NEVER. EVER. Put your PC into sleep after that!

I know that the solution is kind of weird and cannot be done by everyone. If you don't have the hard and/or the knowledge to do so, I suggest for either find someone that has another solution here or go to a PC shop to get it repaired.

Hope it helps!

on many occations this does turn out to be a hardware issue as you have stated , have you added anything or done anything to your pc just prior to your problem? anything at all no matter how insignificant you may think it is , for example using a new/differant camera?

or any changes made to your bios?

edit............just had a looky on google there seems to be plenty of others with this issue and hundreds of differant solutions , you may just have to work through them all lots of guys getting the issue after installing new gpu , is yours seated properly? getting enough power?

I haven't done sleep mode in a while so it is difficult to say what might be causing it. I did recently open my case to connect my brothers hdd to my computer to rescue it. Perhaps I knocked something loose when I did that. The computer operates perfectly otherwise.

hmmmm i wonder if windows is still "seeing" that hard drive , try going to device manager see if its still there , or listed anywhere else and if so delete it

If there has been a BIOS reset recently, you may have knocked off the "Wake on PS2/USB" setting by accident. Most BIOSes have a section on how to make the computer resume from sleep. Mine is under the Power tab on my ASUS BIOS screen. Have a look at that the next time you boot up.

Found the problem. Whenever I removed my brother's HDD, it switched the boot order of my BIOS. As a result, it was trying to boot from my secondary HDD and not the boot SSD.

nice one always better to figure it out yourself