Wake up problem

JaneH

JaneH

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Jane
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For about the past two weeks my PC (Dell, 5 years old, Windows Vista) has an occasional problem when I try to wake it up in the morning. I don't turn it off, but just put it to "Sleep" for the night. The problem occurs in the mornings when I try to wake it. The hard drive wakes up and kind of purrs, the monitor comes on for a second or two, then goes right back to sleep (saying "Entering Power Save Mode"). The hard drive sounds like it's still awake, but I'm not sure. I have to turn off the power two or three times to get the system out of the Power Save mode. The ctrl-alt-delete won't work.

I suppose it's time to invest in a new system but the thoughts of transferring all my current files (photos, docs, new software, etc.) just gives me the shudders...... Does this problem ring a bell with anyone? Or should I just go ahead and get a new system? Or maybe just upgrade my Windows? Or ?????
 
How are you waking it, my previous one I just moved the mouse but with the current W7 on if you do that it goes back to sleep immediately.
If I touch a key (usually I use esc) it starts properly.
Five years old is hardly geriatric if it performs OK otherwise.
Plus you'll get landed with W8, I would like a newer laptop but won't bother until next version if possible.
 
4wd said:
Plus you'll get landed with W8, I would like a newer laptop but won't bother until next version if possible.
Click to expand...

You do realise that the next version isn't going to be THAT much different? and HP have a deal on at the moment where you can buy a PC or laptop with Windows 7 instead if needs be :)
 
4wd said:
How are you waking it, my previous one I just moved the mouse but with the current W7 on if you do that it goes back to sleep immediately.
If I touch a key (usually I use esc) it starts properly.
Five years old is hardly geriatric if it performs OK otherwise.
Plus you'll get landed with W8, I would like a newer laptop but won't bother until next version if possible.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have a wireless mouse and keyboard. I usually turn the mouse off when I put it to sleep (got tired of buying batteries) and back on in the morning, then move the mouse to wake it up. It does perform well otherwise (4 Gb RAM, 500 Gb hard drive). Touching a key on the keyboard won't wake it up when it's being contrary, either. Only a power-off, and then it sometimes takes more than one.

I have a laptop running Window 7 and have had no problems with it (also use a wireless mouse as I hate the touchpad).

I don't think I've changed any settings or installed any new software on my PC, other than the usual updates.
 
Have you tried a system restore to a point before this started happening?
 
Does hitting the power button wake up the PC?
 
kendo1 said:
Have you tried a system restore to a point before this started happening?
Click to expand...

No....that's way beyond my comfort zone! I did check (Control Panel) which programs were recently installed but could see nothing that was installed since this began happening.
 
Dale_tem said:
Does hitting the power button wake up the PC?
Click to expand...

No, I did try that. I have to hold it down for a few minutes to get it to completely shut down, then wait a few minutes, then turn the power on again. Even that doesn't always work.... I sometimes have to repeat that action at least twice.
 
It might be your HDD getting ready to give up the ghost.

Hope you have backups of your important stuff?
 
kendo1 said:
Okay.
It may be worth a system tune up to get things working as they should, before thinking of more drastic measures.

Go to http://www.avg.com/gb-en/pctu_buy_2014_ppc?ECID=ad:go:se:UK-EN-SCH-PC-Tuneup-AVG&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=avg tuneup&utm_content=&utm_campaign=UK-EN-SCH-PC Tuneup AVG&gclid=CKf2nNiy7bwCFRDLtAodlEEA4A

Download the 'free trial' version. Once installed just go through all the options to get your PC back to how it should be.
Then uninstall it.
Click to expand...

I did this, thanks to your advice. It found a lot of problems and reportedly cleaned them up. I just let it do its thing. But the problem is still happening. I've also changed my power settings back to default. Tonight I'm going to just shut it down properly instead of letting it go to sleep. We'll see if that helps.
 
Mikesphotaes said:
It might be your HDD getting ready to give up the ghost.

Hope you have backups of your important stuff?
Click to expand...

Oh yes.... 7 DVDs full of documents, photos, and other vital files. I think it's either the HDD (it IS getting noisier) getting ready to go or the graphics card. Either way, I'm now looking at new computer systems. Transferring files to a new PC doesn't exactly fill me with enthusiasm, but it's certainly better than losing everything if the HDD goes belly-up.
 
It's always worth a try- doing these things first.
If nothing else, your PC should be working better than it was before (when it does work!).
 
A couple of other thoughts.
It's great that you've backed up to DVD, and I guess these are recent, but DVDs do fail (as do all other computer components at some point), so I would also suggest getting an external drive. The USB powered USB3 drives are pretty cheap these days, 1TB for £50.
(I may be a bit paranoid, but I have 4 backups, including NAS & Offline-Offsite).

So, anyhow... When you hibernate a PC, iirc it saves the memory to disk.
You say the disk is getting louder... Potentially you have some kind of issue with sectors on the disk (though why that should present itself as not even trying to wake up normally is beyond me).
You could try running chkdsk on the machine, it will mark dodgy sectors as failed, and the OS will no longer attempt to write to them.
From a command prompt, I think the command is "chkdsk /r", but you can also do it from the GUI. Right click on the drive, select properties, select the tools tab, and then the error checking option. It will run on next bootup.

Finally, don't forget that if the machine dies for reasons other than the hdd failing, you can always add the disk as a slave in your new PC (or put it in a caddy and attach it via USB) to recover any data.

Whatever you do (this cannot be re-iterated enough), make sure you have sufficient , proven backups of anything you don't want to lose.
 
LC2 said:
A couple of other thoughts.
It's great that you've backed up to DVD, and I guess these are recent, but DVDs do fail (as do all other computer components at some point), so I would also suggest getting an external drive. The USB powered USB3 drives are pretty cheap these days, 1TB for £50..
Click to expand...

I've considered this, but what do you do for subsequent backups? Don't you have to first wipe off or reformat the disk before backing up with the new files? With DVDs I can keep a couple of generations of backups in case one fails. Just curious.
 
JaneH said:
I've considered this, but what do you do for subsequent backups? Don't you have to first wipe off or reformat the disk before backing up with the new files? With DVDs I can keep a couple of generations of backups in case one fails. Just curious.
Click to expand...
As mentioned in the post, I have a number of backups. My backup regime is to store files on my NAS, which incrementally backs up to an attached external drive for 1 month. At the end of the month, that disk goes off site and is replaced with a second disk. At the end of month 2, disk 2 goes off site, replaced by disk 3. Then at the end of month 3, disk 3 goes off and is replaced by disk one, which starts afresh. So, worst case is I lose up to 1 month, which as it isn't my living, is acceptable. If I needed the files for my living, I would consider also using an online backup such as Amazon's glacier, or something similar.
 
Synology with the "Time Backup" package, HIGHLY recommended!
 
LC2 said:
As mentioned in the post, I have a number of backups. My backup regime is to store files on my NAS, which incrementally backs up to an attached external drive for 1 month. At the end of the month, that disk goes off site and is replaced with a second disk. At the end of month 2, disk 2 goes off site, replaced by disk 3. Then at the end of month 3, disk 3 goes off and is replaced by disk one, which starts afresh. So, worst case is I lose up to 1 month, which as it isn't my living, is acceptable. If I needed the files for my living, I would consider also using an online backup such as Amazon's glacier, or something similar.
Click to expand...
I guess I don't understand what "NAS" is....Is that your external drive? It sounds like you have three external disk drives, then. I suppose that's good, but would be a bit of overkill for my purposes. Although I'd hate losing anything, with about three or four DVD backup sets, it's less likely that I'd lose much.

Just as an update: my PC is still limping along. It's quieter now and I don't put it to sleep at night. Instead I shut the whole thing down, which still bothers me as I was always told the constant powering off-on was very hard on the disk drive. At least it now wakes right up, so fingers crossed I can go on like this for awhile. We're changing ISPs next week, which wouldn't be related to my problems, but I just don't want to deal with a new computer right now.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. It's much appreciated.
 
A NAS (Network Attached Storage) is in basic terms, storage attached directly to your network, usually in a redundant form (RAID) so that it can tolerate a disk failure should the worst happen. A major benefit of these solutions is the fact that your data is accessible from multiple devices (tablets, phones, PC, laptop etc..), it is technically safer, and backups can be automated. In fact my NAS (Synology DS214 Play) is a media server/transcoder, photo library, telephone system and CCTV system all-in-one.
 
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