Weird Sleep mode problem

[stoffe]

Starting yesterday my computer seems to have developed some strange problem when waking up from Sleep mode. The computer seemingly starts up as usual, but at first the monitor does not power up. If I wait a while the monitor turns on as well, but there is no picture at all being shown.

 

I can press the sleep button to put the computer back into sleep mode again, so it hasn't crashed, but when waking it up again the same problem occurs: the screen shows nothing. A restart doesn't help either; I have to turn off the computer before starting it again for things to go back to normal.

 

Do anyone have any ideas of what could be wrong and what could be done about it? I haven't changed anything hardware or software related with the computer recently.

 

It's an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ CPU running on an ASUS A8N-E (nVidia nForce 4 Ultra) motherboard, ATI Radeon X1900 XT graphics card and a Viewsonic P95f monitor, running on Windows XP Home Edition SP2.

[Astrotoy7]

hey stoffe

 

This is a common problem even in Vista many are reporting. It can sometimes be simply due to mainboards not powering up correctly, and forgetting to properly juice the PCI-E(etc) slot. But diagnosing where, when and why is bit more complicated. Being a regular on a tech site for home theater system builders/users etc, this is one of the most common problems reported.

 

The sleep/resume conundrum is a tricky one because the source of it can be numerous, with mainboard specific, device specific, application specific or even all 3(or even more) occuring concurrently

 

its a constant source of trouble for unsuspecting home theater pc users, who like to put their systems to sleep and then wake to start recording etc...

 

Can you confirm that all was working well until recently ??

 

was there any event, any change at all ?? Even an unrelated crash, non-proper shutdown, installation/uninstallation of a program or driver set ??

 

*the smallest thing can matter !!

 

Have you checked/changed any of these:

*Bios no

*Bios settings for S0, S1, S3 (standby resume settings)

*Bios Vga settings

*Bios PCI-e settings

 

>>what do these say?? anything look out of place ??

 

Make sure your mainboard BIOS S1, S3 etc settings match what the power details in your graphics card are...

 

In device manager>display adapter>ATI x1900>>(R.click)properties>>details ...look for Power capabilities and power state mappings how do they match with what's set in the BIOS

 

*do you have the latest catalyst drivers ?? (7.5 IIRC)

*do you have all yor latest mainboard drivers ??

 

*have you had a good comb through your power management settings.. Do you have hibernation enabled?? Have you tried to enable it and did that make any difference ??

 

One thing Vista boo-hooers dont know much about is how the event viewer has been enhanced. You can actually configure your system event log to map power management related system errors and track them to see if they are related to any specific device. Alas you cant do this in xp, but you can have a general peruse through system logs to see if anything errors have been logged about power features...

 

let us know how you fare. Im assuming your an advanced user so will have no problem checking the things Ive mentioned. Let us know if you need a bit more detail on how to check.

 

There are 3rd party apps that are 'sleep state managers' that can be quite handy. I know one that media center users often use called the MCE standby tool. Might be worth checking out, but you might want to google to see what others are available(although standby tool does do the general stuff too)

 

good luck !!

 

mtfbwya

[stoffe]

Can you confirm that all was working well until recently ??

 

was there any event, any change at all ?? Even an unrelated crash, non-proper shutdown, installation/uninstallation of a program or driver set ??

 

Thank you for this info and your suggestions.

 

Never had any problems with standby mode before, I've used it as long as I've had this computer (roughly 10 months). I haven't changed any hardware, driver or software settings recently, and haven't installed anything new for a few weeks. This just happened suddenly yesterday morning when I was trying to wake up the computer again, and the same thing happened this morning as well. No crashes or any odd behavior I can remember had happened before that.

 

Have you checked/changed any of these:

*Bios no

*Bios settings for S0, S1, S3 (standby resume settings)

*Bios Vga settings

*Bios PCI-e settings

 

>>what do these say?? anything look out of place ??

 

I'm not much of a hardware expert so I don't know if these are the correct things you asked for, but:

Bios: Phoenix Technologies, LTD ASUS A8N-E ACPI BIOS Revision 1013

SMBios version: 2.3

Bios standby: ACPI Suspend [s1 & S3]

Bios VGA: Couldn't find any such setting

Bios PCI-e: Couldn't find any setting

 

Make sure your mainboard BIOS S1, S3 etc settings match what the power details in your graphics card are...

 

In device manager>display adapter>ATI x1900>>(R.click)properties>>details ...look for Power capabilities and power state mappings how do they match with what's set in the BIOS

 

If I found the correct values it says:

S0 --> D0

S1 --> D3

S2 --> Not specified (or something like that, I don't have English Windows)

S3 --> D3

S4 --> D3

S5 --> D3

 

No idea what that means though.

 

 

*do you have the latest catalyst drivers ?? (7.5 IIRC)

*do you have all yor latest mainboard drivers ??

 

I'm using the latest Omega Catalyst drivers (as of last I checked for new ones at least a couple of weeks ago) v7.1, which have been lagging behind a bit lately. Don't know about motherboard drivers, haven't updated those since I got the computer. None of these have caused any trouble before though, and since I haven't gotten any new games recently I haven't bothered updating the graphics drivers further. I'm operating on a "if it's not broken don't fix it" policy when it comes to graphics drivers: as long as everything works fine I see no reason to mess with them.

 

*have you had a good comb through your power management settings.. Do you have hibernation enabled?? Have you tried to enable it and did that make any difference ??

 

I've just been using regular Standby mode, not hibernation mode, since I just use it to avoid having to wait for the computer to start up, I usually close all applications before putting it to sleep. It's set to minimal settings where I have to manually put it in standby mode, it won't power down automatically.

 

let us know how you fare. Im assuming your an advanced user so will have no problem checking the things Ive mentioned. Let us know if you need a bit more detail on how to check.

 

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to computer hardware, so hopefully I've checked the correct things you asked for above, but since I don't know what they mean I can't tell if there is something wrong with them. I'll try to switch it to hibernation mode tonight before I power it down and see if that makes any difference.

[Astrotoy7]

The s and d setting represents how the hardware and mainboard act in the different power management profiles...eg standby/resume and hibernate etc(the S settings)

 

Still, the settings looks correct(although they actually may not be working on the mainboard end particularly)

 

Try the hibernation enable first...and also give the new 7.5 radeon drivers a try. Its XP, so youre very unlikely to go backwards rather than forwards. As installing drivers anew will reset their power management profiles, its always a quick way of trying to fix this issue, and easy to roll back from. Just make sure you follow the recommended install procedure.

 

mtfbwya

[stoffe]

Try the hibernation enable first...and also give the new 7.5 radeon drivers a try. Its XP, so youre very unlikely to go backwards rather than forwards. As installing drivers anew will reset their power management profiles, its always a quick way of trying to fix this issue, and easy to roll back from. Just make sure you follow the recommended install procedure.

 

I tried using hibernation mode when turning off the computer last night, but that doesn't seem to have made any difference: I still got no image on the screen when waking up the computer. I pressed the Sleep key again to go back to hibernation, pulled out the power cord to make the computer turn off, plugged it back in and turned it on. As before everything worked as it should after a power down and start up, though this time it loaded the memory data from the HD and restored me to the desktop due to using hibernation mode.

 

I find it weird that it works without problems if you turn off the power and then start the computer, but the problem persists if you just reboot the computer without turning it off. What's the difference there?

[Astrotoy7]

...I find it weird that it works without problems if you turn off the power and then start the computer, but the problem persists if you just reboot the computer without turning it off. What's the difference there?

 

I has something to do with the way power is cycling around via PSU to motherbaord. Diagnosing whether it is PSU or mainboard(etc) is really a case of pulling that component and seeing if it reproduces that behaviour in another setup... eg. you dont have a spare PSU laying about do you ?? It's a real bugger of an issue to sort

 

mtfbwya

[CLONECOMMANDER501]

I had a similar problem, do a virus scan. A good one.

[Astrotoy7]

I had a similar problem, do a virus scan. A good one.

 

I doubt stoffe would be foolish enough to leave his pc exposed in any way

 

...secondly, you were getting "clicking noises"... he wasnt.

 

mtfbwya

[stoffe]

I has something to do with the way power is cycling around via PSU to motherbaord. Diagnosing whether it is PSU or mainboard(etc) is really a case of pulling that component and seeing if it reproduces that behaviour in another setup... eg. you dont have a spare PSU laying about do you ??

 

Still no progress, sleep/standby/hibernation mode remains essentially useless.

 

Since I'm not much of a hardware expert I don't have a spare power supply or other backup components, and I'm not really comfortable doing brain surgery on the computer unless it's absolutely necessary. (My hardware tinkering skills extend to putting in more RAM or replacing the hard drive, pretty much nothing more advanced than that.)

 

Just weird that this would suddenly change without me having done anything unusual with the computer, when it had worked fine before that. Could something have broken hardware-wise? Since it's only 10 months old you'd think things would last longer than that, though.

 

I had a similar problem, do a virus scan. A good one.

 

I've scanned the computer for viruses and malware with AVG, Adaware and Spybot but they didn't detect anything. I might have picked up something more stealthy, like a rootkit, though I doubt it since I haven't downloaded or installed any new software recently.

[CLONECOMMANDER501]

I've heard of viruses that can download themselves without the user's permission.

[Astrotoy7]

I've heard of viruses that can download themselves without the user's permission.

 

over broad networks yes, on a personal desktop - behind a hardware firewall(router/modem), software firewall(windows and whatever third party stuff you use) -its supremely unlikely. It more usually the result of downloading or opening/installing something questionable...not a mysterious entity that gets on sight unseen.

 

stoffe. If its 10 months old, doesnt it have a warranty ?? take it back to where you got and have it looked at - especially that psu and mainboard. If you cant be bothered doing that, you'll just have to live with it until you want to further investigate it if you come across some new hardware.

 

mtfbwya

[stoffe]

Seems like this might just be a symptom of a larger problem after all. Recently when starting some games via the ATI Tray the image vanishes from the screen right away when it changes the graphics card settings to the profile for the game/app. The computer still seems to run, but the screen is black. It will remain black even after a restart unless I turn off the computer completely for a while, then it seems to work again. If I don't turn it off long enough there will be an image on the screen, but it will flicker and distort violently.

 

Any idea how to determine if it's the graphics card or the mother board that's freaking out?

 

Seems like my usual luck isn't about to change, I've now had hardware problems with all three PCs I've owned so far. Oh well.