PC can't wake up anymore.

[Caesum]

Hello. I have a problem with my PC. For some reason for about a year my PC can't wake up after it goes to sleep. I've reinstalled Windows 7, but on a newly installed, clean OS the problem still stays. On Windows 8.1(which I had only for a while because it was awful) it was the same. I'm not sure if it's a windows issue, hardware problem or something.
The thing is, sometimes my PC can't wake up. Not always, but it's very often. It goes to sleep well, but when I wan't to wake it up it starts, I can hear fans working, and then stops. Just like that, as if the power was cut off. Then it starts again and stops once more. And it goes like that forever. I have to unplug it from power and wait a bit, only then it starts, but from hibernation.

Does anyone knows how to fix that? Why does it do such a thing? I tried looking up google for such problems but most of them were of USB mouses/keyboard not waking up or actually waking up PC. I couldn't find my problem.

My PC:
Gigabyte P35-DS3
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
3072MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Windows 7 32-bit

 

[Tookeri]

It may be a power issue. Sleep is a low power state that holds all information in memory. If the power at any time is lost that information is gone and it's impossible to wake up.
Hibernation doesn't need power because it writes to disk.

I assume you have a desktop computer and are using Hybrid Sleep which can be useful in case of power outage. One option is to switch from Hybrid Sleep to Hibernate and you won't run into these problems anymore.

 

[Caesum]

The problem is hibernate is extremely slow, so when I wake up PC from hibernation it takes from 10 minutes to even more to get it work tolerably. Sleep is lightning fast but it stops working quite often. I would prefer to know if there's a way to fix sleep mode rather than turning it off completely.

 

[Tookeri]

You could try a different AC outlet, power cable. If you have a timer or similar that cuts the power at night then stop using that.
Maybe not the advice you were looking for but it sounds like a power issue, especially since you had it on both Win 7+8. In case it's not, see this old thread: http://www.sevenforums.com/performance-maintenance/153390-computer-can-t-wakeup-sleep-mode.html

 

[Caesum]

Thanks for answer, I have switched cables several times but with no effect. I've checked my AC outlet with a tool to see if it doesn't have some power problems, but no. I cannot plug my PC to another outlet though because I don't have an extension cabel. I don't have such things like timer and it wouldn't be the reason anyway. My PC can't wake up the second it goes to sleep, I've checked it.

I wonder if it might be either an power supply or motherboard issue? My GA-P35-DS3 tends to be a bit laggy, especially after some wake ups. Sometimes after a successful wake up ot has that funny lagging every second, in which you can hear one tune of music playing constantly and mouse jumping from one place to another.

 

[DavidE]

I have seen where Resume from Hibernate is much faster if the PC was shut down with Hibernate rather than Sleep when Hybrid Sleep is used.

You can easily test this by doing a Hibernate, and then restart the PC.
See if it does start up much faster than the 10 minutes...

You can hibernate from the Start button / Run with this command
shutdown /h

 

[ElctrcRngr]

USB hub

I know this is going to sound weird, but if your keyboard is plugged into a USB hub (or the dongle if using a wireless), try taking the hub out of the circuit and plugging directly into the USB port on the computer. Over the years I've had two or three hubs of various makes that caused the computer to not wake from sleep when a key was pressed. When the hub was removed the problem disappeared. It may have been that the hubs driver was the problem, I never investigated deeply enough to find out

 

[3Colors]

What fans are sounding ? I dont think it's the video card. Can be the power supply. Because once in the other PC I use, when I pressed the power button the PC turn on, but then turns off after minutes.

But it seems to be related to hardware.

 

[Caesum]

DavidW7ncus - Indeed, that is interesting! I have hibernated my PC the way you suggested and when turned on again Windows was already fully working when desktop loaded. Incredible! If I won't find an answer to sleep problems then I guess I'll stick to just hibernate. Thanks!

ElctrcRngr - unfortunately I do not use any USB hub/dongle.

3Colors - SPU, power supply. Everything. It starts normally, but then stops before PC can even turn on the display. Then starts again and loops like that for eternity.

 

[DavidE]

DavidW7ncus - Indeed, that is interesting! I have hibernated my PC the way you suggested and when turned on again Windows was already fully working when desktop loaded. Incredible! If I won't find an answer to sleep problems then I guess I'll stick to just hibernate. Thanks!

Glad to hear that.
Now you see you have a workable plan B, to use Hibernate instead of Sleep.
If you do end up using Hibernate, there's a couple of things you can do to make it easier.
You can create a BAT file with the Hibernate command on your desktop.
Then when you want to Hibernate, double click the BAT file.
You can also turn off Hybrid in Power Options.
If you turn off Hybrid, you will have Hibernate in the Start button / Shutdown options.

Your problem does seem to be power related, but as you are seeing it can be quite to difficult to find the cause/solution

I think it could be an issue in the PSU, Motherboard, BIOS, or perhaps even with RAM.
It seems the "sleeping" session can not be reliably restored from RAM sometimes...
But, the session can be resumed from Hibernate (HD file) reliably.

For me Resume from Hibernate is not as fast as Wake from Sleep, but it is a lot faster this way.

hth,
David

 

[Caesum]

Thanks, I have already made it so my PC hibernates when I push power button. The only thing I dislike about hibernation is that it always has to run from bios, making it bit slower than sleep mode. I'd like to know if it's possible to make that part any faster?

 

[DavidE]

No, that's the way Hibernate works.
It will always run through bios because with hibernate the power can go out and not cause a problem.
It will still restart correctly (restore the Windows session).