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General discussion

Computer freezes during standby/hibernate

Aug 11, 2010 12:07AM PDT

I have a Dell XPS M1210 running Windows Vista. Occasionally (though not all the time, oddly) when I try to standby or hibernate, the screen goes black, but the lights remain on and the computer won't respond to any commands, USB input, or anything else I try to do. I have to power down manually and restart.

Any suggestions on how to fix this problem? It's annoying enough that I'm considering a clean Windows 7 install, but if it's a hardware issue the problem will follow me. Thanks.

Discussion is locked

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My new HP laptop did that too.
Aug 11, 2010 12:15AM PDT

I've solved this too many times but let me share my personal experience. In my case I had to get HP on the chat and they told me about the updated BIOS for my machine. They also warned me about using drivers other than what they supply.

Guess what? It's locked up one time in weeks now. But I can live with that because I write C# code and it looks like my bad on that one.

How does this apply to you? Try dell.com, your service tag and see if they issued a BIOS and use their drivers for chipset, video and everything else. If that fails, talk to dell.

Worth noting is that malware and such can lead us away from the real causes (it's the malware or virus/trojan.) If this machine has torrents or more I always write it off as another malware damaged machine.
Bob

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I myself have this problem
Aug 11, 2010 7:52AM PDT

I face this problem as well but only when recovering from hibernate on my laptop with Windows Vista. I've never had any problems when hibernating with XP. The problem is probably the OS, if you perform a clean W7 install should go away as well.

Alternatively you could re-format your laptop and reinstall Vista which probably should solve the problem for a while, although if you were going to do that I'd recommend installing W7 anyway.