How to troubleshoot sleep problems

[pmills]

I have a Vista Ultimate machine that will not reliably sleep or wake up.

Through web searches, I have learned that these problems are often related
to hardware driver issues. I have two pieces of hardware that are often
mentioned in reference to Vista sleep problems - an NVidia 8800 GTX and an
X-fi sound card. I have tried the most current drivers available from the
hardware manufacturers, as well as some beta drivers, and attempted various
fixes as recommended by many of the troubleshooting tips I have found on the
web.

All this has been to no avail.

When I try to sleep the computer, it usually turns off the monitor and hangs
with the fans still running. On rare occasions, it will go ahead and shut
down, but waking the computer to a usable state is then not possible because
the monitor stays powered down upon waking. Any attempt to sleep or wake
the computer eventually results in my having to hold the power switch down
and force a restart.

My question: Is there a reliable method (reviewing events, logs, etc.) to
pin down more precisely which problem or problems I'm having with
sleep/wake? I have a second hard drive with a bootable copy of Windows XP
Pro which I used previously on this machine, and it sleeps and wakes
instantly and reliably with all of the same hardware.

Thanks for any information anyone would be willing to provide about how I
can troubleshoot this problem.

 

[Spirit]

Troubleshoot Vista Sleep Problems -Powercfg - Hiberfil.sys

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/63567-powercfg-sleep-problems.html

 

[Michael]

You can get some information by typing powercfg -A (/? for additional
options for this command) at a command prompt.

Michael

 

[pmills]

Thank you for your reply. Even though I am running 32-bit Vista, I followed
the steps outlined in your link, and am happy to report that my Vista
machine is now reliably sleeping and waking up!

The only issue remaining is that once my system awakens, one of the internal
hard drives (I have 4) begins to make "shutting down" noises - you can hear
it click and then a either a spin down or head-parking noise (not sure
which) is audible. In a few minutes it happens again. I'm not sure which
drive it is, and the S.M.A.R.T. data doesn't indicate any drive problems
with any drives. It's not a deal-killer, but the shut-down noise is
distracting, since it is happening about once every couple of minutes or so.
The only way to make the noise stop is to do a hard power down and restart
the computer. This does *not* happen when I'm running the machine from its
XP operating system and do a sleep/wake cycle.

Again, thanks for your help.