Windows 7 Sleep Mode Issue
Written by Alan Monday, 22 February 2010 08:00
If you have Windows 7 (or Vista) then you may, one day, have a serious problem getting out of sleep mode. I have three PC’s here, all running Windows 7, and two of them sometimes are slow to wake up. Slow is one thing, but non-existent is another, and earlier today mine was non-existent. Here’s what happened.
My wife and daughter were using the desktop earlier. As usual it went to sleep ten minutes after they left the office. About one hour later I arrived and moved the mouse to wake up the PC. Nothing. My desktop is a Dell, so your lights may vary, but the front panel light remained yellow. I held in the power button in for several seconds (as all Windows users are used to doing) and the PC shut down. I pushed the button again, expecting a boot-up, and got nothing but the same yellow sleep light. I pulled the power plug from the back, waited and plugged it back in. The same yellow light. I repeated this process several times, each more desperate than the previous – the computer is one four months old.
I work in tech-support for a major bank so I pride myself in knowing what I am doing here, but this one had me stumped, and rather than waste time looking for alternative solutions, I decided to call Dell. Honestly, I expected it to be a dead motherboard, so I had decided the best route was to get Dell to diagnose that and give me a replacement or repair order.
I jumped through a few hoops in my call – the service number, and then the inevitable questions - yes, it’s a desktop, Inspiron, slim-lime, etc. I described the problem and the first or second thing I was told was to move the mouse (as I had done), but WHILE HOLDING DOWN TWO BUTTONS ON THE KEYBOARD. Immediately the yellow light on the tower switched to blue. About 30-60 seconds later the monitor screen came back. Everything was the same as it had been, I rebooted with no issues.
So, simply, hold down two keys while moving the mouse until your screen comes back and your sleep problem is fixed.
I asked the support tech if this problem was common and was told that it was, actually, pretty rare. So I guess I” took one for the team” today. But, at least I got subject matter for the readers. And if it helps someone else then it was worth it.
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