Vista+Sleep Problems
A big shout out "Thanks" to PMS Witch. Through some messages back and forth I believe I have moved closer to a complete resolution and wanted to share some info.
Closer but not 100% -- yet.
a) I found an app was installed by my kid "Software Informer" which appears to be maybe a spy ware app. The program acts as a super duper version updater. I strongly believe that the app was running 24/7 and thus the system didn't believe it was inactive to sleep. Perhaps it was pinging or checking or sending information to it's mother - who knows. It is gone now.
Based mostly on this, now the system, after a period of time will go to sleep. As such it powers down to sleep - the power light flickers and the USB connected fan system shuts off. Before that, the system would NEVER sleep.
YES - if you Google, and check the "States available for the notebook" it incorrectly states that the notebook can never go to sleep (s1 or s3 or both are not available) but that is untrue.
b) As with XP, I believe, the OS gets confused. With XP, I sometimes find the "screen saver" and "monitor off" functions will fail. To resolve, I bump the times up - say blank after 10m to 5m and monitor off after 10m instead of 20m. By doing that there is a bit of a pause during the apply and after that sleep/monitor off work again.
With Vista, I "suspect" a similar case.
c) I have played with the "lid" and "power" buttons -- on the Dell power quickly = sleep; power a long time = reset. There are still issues between these functions AND the power configurations.
Interestingly - if you go INTO a power config they allow you to control the sleep/hibernate - specifically what happens when you press sleep. YET - from the main power control window - where it shows the 3 most common power schemes, there is an option on the left menu that mentions "controlling the sleep button" (or similar). Not sure if one is overriding the other or not. But what I do know, when I go into "full power scheme" the system will not sleep. So I to need to play with that.
What I need to get to is:
a) A scheme that works on 50% power with full sleeping/hibernating when not plugged in;
b) A scheme that has 100% power but still has full sleeping ability
c) A scheme that offers 100% power but zero sleeping - ie when upgrading or doing specific work where I never want it to sleep but I am monitoring over an hour or two.
I still think there are issues in the above between (b) and (c). I don't really think "plugged and unplugged" schemes are working properly. But I will battle with those going forward.
At the very least now I am happy that at least after a period of time of inactivity, the machine does go into proper sleep mode as it did originally.
Hopefully some info that can help others in the future. Checking out rogue wares that keep your machine up constantly.
Blake |
