My PC is a teenager – it won’t wake up in the morning
Posted on 22nd Mar 2010 at 10:14 by Clive Webster with 43 comments
I usually set my PC to Sleep overnight so that I can start work exactly where I left off (and within a few seconds too). Since a few days ago, my PC has refused to wake up though. Every morning I have to do the tech-equivalent of pulling off the covers and opening the curtains, which usually means crawling around under my desk. This is a less than perfect start to my day.
The trouble started a few months ago, when I upgraded the graphics card to a HD 5650 in order to get a HDMI output so that I could test a screen. My previous graphics card didn’t require a PCI-E connector, but apparently the immense thirst of the paltry HD 5650 was enough to pop my crappy PSU (this is my work PC, so I take no responsibility for the poor choice of power supply).
Swapping in a slightly less crappy PSU, I still couldn’t get the PC to turn on until I had I unplugged the USB and network cables. It seems the PSU blew the 5V standby rail of the motherboard.
One motherboard swap later, and everything was working fine again. Yay me. Except the same problem just happened a few days ago – the PC refused to wake up until I explained to it that it would be late for the school bus, and that it would have to walk there if it missed it, because I’m not going to drive it all that way. Or something like that, anyway. It seems the same problem has happened – remove the USB cables and the PC will wake up, and then all I need to do is re-initialise the network controller (which seems to flake out overnight) and I can start working.
That’s kind of fine for now – it takes a couple minutes longer to turn my PC on in the morning, but I can sync that with tea-making time, so I’m not wasting that much time. However, I’m now in that horrible predicament where I know that my PC might fail catastrophically any minute, but I don’t really have time to change out the broken components.
Bloody teenagers…
The trouble started a few months ago, when I upgraded the graphics card to a HD 5650 in order to get a HDMI output so that I could test a screen. My previous graphics card didn’t require a PCI-E connector, but apparently the immense thirst of the paltry HD 5650 was enough to pop my crappy PSU (this is my work PC, so I take no responsibility for the poor choice of power supply).
Swapping in a slightly less crappy PSU, I still couldn’t get the PC to turn on until I had I unplugged the USB and network cables. It seems the PSU blew the 5V standby rail of the motherboard.
One motherboard swap later, and everything was working fine again. Yay me. Except the same problem just happened a few days ago – the PC refused to wake up until I explained to it that it would be late for the school bus, and that it would have to walk there if it missed it, because I’m not going to drive it all that way. Or something like that, anyway. It seems the same problem has happened – remove the USB cables and the PC will wake up, and then all I need to do is re-initialise the network controller (which seems to flake out overnight) and I can start working.
That’s kind of fine for now – it takes a couple minutes longer to turn my PC on in the morning, but I can sync that with tea-making time, so I’m not wasting that much time. However, I’m now in that horrible predicament where I know that my PC might fail catastrophically any minute, but I don’t really have time to change out the broken components.
Bloody teenagers…
43 Comments
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Turn PC on
Go make coffee
Return to freshly booted PC with less extraneous stuff in the memory and page file.
Drink coffee while surfing for interesting stuff to report to us while we battle with boredom at work
Everyones a winner
- Sleep and standby barely work, and work best on laptops, but even after a couple of days they need a reboot
- Hibernate will see you clear for anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks but at that point it'll randomly crash and you need a reboot
I have honestly found that just shutting down every night and booting while sorting your morning drink is the best way forwards.
+1
Never seen a desktop system do this well, it's just not worth the hassle.
My (work) notebook does fine, but get's restarted once a week anyway.
I noticed that in the latest PSU roundup in CPC, why is that? Most power supplies had a lot worse 5v and 5vSB rails than any other rail. Even the premium grade Antec Truepower New 650w got 4.95v (brilliant) on the 5v rail but 4.75v on the 5vSB rail which is the minimum of ATX spec o_O
It's really quite nice when it does work.
One-click button on a win7 gadget to sleep, mash the keyboard to wake and the PC is usable 2 seconds later :D
Though you do need to reboot sometimes as others mentioned, after a few weeks windows can get a bit wonky and also some updates demand it.
zoon and cyril summed it up.. most of the comps out there just don't do it right- even had a issue on the eee netbook bought last year- came configured to hibernate every 10 minutes.. but took the nic with it until you disabled it in the manager
feel sorry for people who don't know what's going on.. I could see a bunch of eee's getting smashed rolling down the stairs after talking with a fake geek with glasses from best buys
it would go something like this..
"this f'ing computer you sold me doesn't work it won't connect to the net wifi!"
"sir, calm down.. now what is it doing exactly?"
"it won't work.. sometimes it works sometimes it don't!"
"come in and we'll take a look at it.. $60 a hour + and upgrades you might need"
*click laptop takes a trip down the steps and the guy runs out and buys a apple
+1
I set my keys on the desk my computer jumps up.
I had to set windows 7 to performance mode because it would freeze just randomly sometimes within 5 minutes sometimes it would take 5 hours.
I have spent several hours on the phone, and several emails with Microsoft, to try and correct the problem, I have even flashed the bios and updated all the drivers and did a clean install of windows like 3 times, but it is all to no avail. However, when I set windows 7 to performance mode, I have absolutely no issues with my computer freezing, so go figure. I can live without sleep or hibernate mode.
Now it's in a new case (Zalman MS1000) and water cooled I can sleep through it being on though, although as it wakes up it spins up the CD wich is pretty noisy.
I've never had a desktop that both hibernated and slept properly. Most laptops work fine though.
Of course, some of this may be down to my awful HDD.
1 - turn off the mouse being able to wake the PC, optical/laser mice can be hilariously sensitive ;)
2. check for scheduled tasks. For example win7 windows update defaults to waking the PC to install things at 3AM, AV can do this too :p
Why not suggest I get Mac while you're at it?
As most of the kit in your PC takes power from the 12V rail, I think the 5V is often neglected. But it's a nice reminder for me (and anyone who likes the benefits of Sleep or Hibernate) to check our reviews for 5V rail stability/strength. Nice contribution Isitari!
See my previous post: Windows 7 gave my PC insomnia
I've built way more PCs than that and I've never had any problems with hibernate. I've always used it on PC based laptops and UMPCs due to the slow boot times pre win7.
Sleep is another matter though, getting them to wake up on demand depends on the right bios settings and input devices.
Since 7 I've been able to do that at 100%. Left the power management options default and when I saw the first time the pc went sleeping, got all nervous about crashing. To my surprise, I forgot to reboot and went all night with it on, when shutting off, it was properly done and then I remembered about the hibernate. It just started to work
It's normally fine for about a week, then it'll need a reboot, mostly because Virtualbox won't pick my scanner up any more. (I run a 32-bit Vista VM and pipe my scanner to it cos they never made a 64-bit driver. It still works, so I'm not going to get a new one)
I have found that it wakes up at 8.30am though - but that's just a BIOS setting.
Put it to sleep with the front power button at night when I head off to bed, hit the power button when i get up in the morning. Still runs as sweet as a fresh clean boot. it's Win XP, heavily tweaked by me :) Maybe I'm just lucky
Hibernate is usually pretty fast and is much more stable in my experience. Personally though, I always switch off. Saves a little electricity and guarantees a clean boot every time, and it's pretty quick with Win7 even without an SSD.
Put it this way, would you sacrifice 20 seconds each morning to ensure a totally stable boot? If the answer is yes, then always clean boot.
Hibernate however is awesome for both desktops and laptops.
Hey, we're bashing PC's here, don't come with arguments or shiny objects...:D
Just switch it off if you're not using it! Fine, hibernate/sleep uses less energy than just leaving the machine on, but it still uses power.
It's costing you money, it's environmentally indefensible, it hurts performance and it doesn't always work properly. Turn it off, you criminally lazy idiots! It takes less than a minute to turn on a PC!
Pathetic, all of you.
/pedant mode
That's for business PCs, the numbers for higher power draw home machines won't exactly be any lower.
i just tested it on a laptop:
-hibernate
-unplug AC and remove all batteries for 30+ secs
-re-attach battery and power up
-perfect restore from hibernate...
requiring power for hibernate would pretty much defeat the point of it.
Have to agree with most sleep on anything other than a laptop is pretty pointless, hibernation seems to work on most desktops but even just one driver issue and both can stop working.
A little excerpt from mobo manual: "USB device wake-up feature requires a power supply that can provide 500mA on the +5VSB lead for each USB port; otherwise, the system will not power up"
Sleep mode works pretty well on my PC - as long as I click on hibernate button with (USB)mouse. If I press (PS2)keyboard shortcut, the screen will go black but it'll never power down.
Which is why one uses a switchable extension cord...one button and everything computer related is completely offline :D
Hey, I don't think you could call those who are doing sleep/hibernate as lazy because it's actually meant to speed up the whole thing so you can immediately use your PC. I think it's quite the opposite :P
Back to topic, when you got problems with sleep/hibernation, most likely it's because of some device driver's incompatibilities.