Resuming from Standby is a normal boot-up process

[Guest]

Hi all

I enabled S3 (Suspend to RAM) in my BIOS and reinstalled XP Pro today, but
when I go into Standby it appears to complete the process successfully (it
goes off within ~5 seconds) but more often than not, when I start up the PC
again, it loads up Windows from scratch rather than recovering from Standby
mode. A few times it has resumed correctly, but with no obvious reason as to
why.

I've no idea what the problem is and it's really frustrating

Anyone have any ideas? Help much appreciated!

 

[Unknown]

How are you starting up your system after it has been in standby?

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your reply!

It doesn't matter -- either pressing the power button or using the keyboard
hotkey (Ctrl-F1) has the same effect -- the machine boots up as though it was
shut down, not put into standby.

 

[Unknown]

Don't use the F1 key or the power button. Set the mouse and keyboard to
allow coming out of standby.
Go to mouse---hardware---properties--power management. Do the same for
keyboard---hardware--properties---power management.

 

[Guest]

OK I tried that, but the problem is the same -- clicked the mouse and the
fans etc spun up, but windows booted from scratch rather than waking up from
standby.

Any other ideas? Your help is much appreciated

 

[Unknown]

One thing comes to mind. Perhaps you have an error occurring when you exit
sleep mode. That would cause a reboot if in system properties-- advanced tab
you are set to reboot on error. If so, remove the X from reboot on error so
you can trap the error. Post back.

 

[Guest]

Okay, I did what you said, and when waking the machine up from Standby (by
clicking the mouse) the screen just stayed blank, and the lights on the case
did not light up. So basically there was a system failure.

The question to answer now is, what is it and how do I fix it? I looked in
the dumps in Windows/Minidump but they are full of gibberish and I can't
interpret them whatsoever. There are no events in the Event Viewer which are
helpful, except potentially one -- I get an error in ati2mtag (ATi driver)
which says 'CRT invalid display type'. I looked this error up on ATi support
and they say it doesn't affect anything and is just an annoyance rather than
a real bug. Apart from this there is nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[Guest]

Okay, I did what you said, and when waking the machine up from Standby (by
clicking the mouse) the screen just stayed blank, and the lights on the case
did not light up. So basically there was a system failure.

The question to answer now is, what is it and how do I fix it? I looked in
the dumps in Windows/Minidump but they are full of gibberish and I can't
interpret them whatsoever. There are no events in the Event Viewer which are
helpful, except potentially one -- I get an error in ati2mtag (ATi driver)
which says 'CRT invalid display type'. I looked this error up on ATi support
and they say it doesn't affect anything and is just an annoyance rather than
a real bug. Apart from this there is nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[Unknown]

What are you referring to when you say 'the lights on the case'?

 

[Unknown]

Check ATi for an updated video driver?.

Okay, I did what you said, and when waking the machine up from Standby (by
clicking the mouse) the screen just stayed blank, and the lights on the
case
did not light up. So basically there was a system failure.

The question to answer now is, what is it and how do I fix it? I looked
in
the dumps in Windows/Minidump but they are full of gibberish and I can't
interpret them whatsoever. There are no events in the Event Viewer which
are
helpful, except potentially one -- I get an error in ati2mtag (ATi driver)
which says 'CRT invalid display type'. I looked this error up on ATi
support
and they say it doesn't affect anything and is just an annoyance rather
than
a real bug. Apart from this there is nothing out of the ordinary.

 

[Guest]

I mean the power light and hard disc light. The fans spun up but the lights
didnt come on, and the screen remained dark.

 

[Guest]

I did think of this. I'm running 7.7 and the latest is 7.9, but surely a
driver from ~2 months ago should support standby?! I'll upgrade to the
newest one (I downgraded to 7.7 because I had some other problems with 7.9
but I'll upgrade again to see if it helps this problem.

 

[Bob I]

FWIW, you should use the ATI drivers that cause the fewest number of
problems for you. I've had 2 ATI cards. The first one died years ago,
and I battled it's replacement for 30 days, then gave up and took it
back to the store because every single driver version I tried had one
thing or another that wouldn't work properly. If I was paid by the hour
to configure that thing, I could have bought several computers.

 

[Guest]

Yep I've just realised what you said -- I tried to upgrade to 7.9 but lost
DirectX and general desktop and video acceleration, then I downgraded to 7.8
and had patchy DirectX. Only 7.7 work properly. So updating the driver is
no solution for me.

Are there any other possibilities regarding standby, or should I just accept
that S3 isn't something I can expect from my particular PC?

 

[Unknown]

If you search Google for 'suspend on ram', there are many found items.
Perhaps you can find a solution there.