Standby

[wofam]

My computer will not go into "Standby" mode, what can I check?

 

[Twayne]

My computer will not go into "Standby" mode, what can I check?

Check for and describe some details of the experience and your system so
someone will have something to work with. Your post is akin to saying
"my car wont' turn off, what can i check?"

 

[Richard Urban]

I gave up using sleep and hibernate on my computer 5 1/2 years ago. Nothing
but problems - no matter which drivers I used for my hardware. I changed to
Vista and had the same problem.

One month ago I upgraded my computer to a new M/B, processor and RAM

Now sleep and hibernate just work!

Hint! It's your hardware.

 

[Paul]

My computer will not go into "Standby" mode, what can I check?

One tool you can use, is Microsoft "dumppo". It is a tiny
download, at only 12KB or so. It is a DOS tool, so you run
it from a Command window. You can either look under Accessories
for Command Prompt or you can enter "cmd" in the run box.

start:run:cmd

Dumppo can be downloaded here. The Microsoft FTP server is a little
bit tricky. If you have trouble getting the file, post back.

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/products/Oemtest/v1.1/WOSTest/Tools/Acpi/dumppo.exe

To use the program, first you can use the "cd" or "change directory"
command, to navigate to where the command is stored.

C: # select the volume first
cd first_level_directory # navigate down to where "dumppo.exe" is stored
cd second_level_directory

cd .. # this command allows you to "move up a level"

Now the prompt will be C:\first\second , showing the current
working directory. Now, enter the actual command you want to
run.

dumppo.exe admin cap > dump_out.txt

That causes the text output of the program, to be stored in a text
file. You can open the resulting text file with Notepad. The
"dump_out.txt" file should end up in the same directory as
the executable file.

You can run the command a second time, without the redirect, to
see the output in the DOS command window. Like this.

dumppo.exe admin cap

This is my output, copied from Notepad.

*******
Admin policy overrides
Min sleep state......: S1
Max sleep state......: S4 - hibernate
Min video timeout....: 0
Max video timeout....: -1
Min spindown timeout.: 0
Max spindown timeout.: -1
power capabilties
System power capabilties
Power Button Present....: TRUE
Sleep Button Present....: TRUE
Lid Present.............: FALSE
System states supported.: S1 S3 S4 S5
Hiber file reserved.....: TRUE
Thermal control.........: FALSE
CPU Throttle control....: TRUE
Processor min throttle..: 46
Processor trottle scale.: 100 (1%)
Some disk will spindown.: TRUE
System batteries present: FALSE
System batteries scale..: (G:0 C:0) (G:0 C:0) (G:0 C:0)
Ac on line wake ability.: Unspecified
Lid wake ability........: Unspecified
RTC wake ability........: S4 - hibernate
Min device wake.........: Unspecified
Default low latency wake: Unspecified
*******

What that says, is my min and max sleep states, span
S1 through S4.

S1 is the state where the monitor is turned off, but
the fans are still spinning. It doesn't save much power.

S3 is standby suspend to RAM. The fans go off. The OS
and session are still stored in RAM, for as long as
the PC still has power. If there is a power failure,
my session is lost. On the next boot after a power
failure while in S3, the OS would have to start from
scratch.

S4 is hibernate. The OS and session are stored on disk.
The power can go off, and a hibernate session can still
be recovered on the next power up. When the computer is
awakened, the hibernate file on disk, is transferred to
system RAM.

The line

System states supported.: S1 S3 S4 S5

is the hardware support for standby. If you enter the BIOS,
sometimes the BIOS offers "S1 only", in which case the computer
cannot enter S3. The fans will continue to spin if that happens.
The BIOS may offer "S1 & S3", and that option will allow the
fans to go off, if you select "standby" in Windows, since S3
is being used.

If the OS is installed, while the BIOS is set incorrectly
(S1 only) and later you correct the BIOS to S1 & S3,
you can use dumppo to fix up the OS side of things. This
forum thread gives details.

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?p=1825058&postcount=31

Paul