Unresponsive Windows 7 after Sleep

[Palustris]

Strange crash this and not every time. If the machine is put into Sleep or goes after non use, when restarted with mouse movement, the programs already running will work, but cannot get anything else to work. So no connection to Internet. Going to either Restart or Shutdown, the machine reports Explorer is working. Forcing Restart or Shutdown results in the machine hanging. Have to switch off and restart, running Windows as normal. Cannot find a way of closing Explorer as it does not appear in Task Manager.
Any suggestions?
PC.
Windows 7

[Palustris]

[BarriedaleNick]

Explorer is a process and can be seen under the process tab not the application tab when running taskmanager...
So you may be able to stop it there but I doubt it will do any good!

Have a look here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproperf/thread/19a3701c-2cf6-4000-b855-14baf2aee3b2/

Update video drivers, check auto hide on the task bar at least some things to try.  Is it an intel chipset??
s

[Palustris]

Update video drivers, check auto hide on the task bar at least some things to try.  Is it an intel chipset??

Duh?
Auto hide the task bar is not checked so the Taskbar stays visitble all the time.

[BarriedaleNick]

Sometimes the Disk Cleanup tool can bugger Sleep and hibernation as it deletes a critical file...


   1. Click Start
      Collapse the Start button
      , click All Programs, and then click Accessories.
   2. Right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
          *
            Collapse this imageExpand this image
            User Account Control permission
            If you are prompted for an administrator password or for confirmation, type the password or click Continue.
   3. Type powercfg -h on, and then press ENTER.

[Palustris]

Done that. Will see what happens. Strangely enough it has not happened since I asked about it, so it is hard to know whether something has worked or not!
Ta muchly.

[markp2511]

I had a similar problem with a new pc a few weeks ago: kept locking up after waking it - took 5 minutes or so to become responsive again.  Also it was taking up to 30 minutes to boot up from cold...and this was a grand's worth of 6 week old intel i7 machine (6gb ddr3 ram / 1.5tb hd / 1gb graphics card etc etc).

I booted it in diagnostic mode and ran a SMART check - and it failed the short self test.  As I had it from PC World I rang them up..."You'll have to contact the manufacturer as it's more than 28 days old" they said.  Ah...that old chestnut.  After telling them that by law if it's less than 6 months old they have to prove it wasn't faulty at the time of purchase, and that my contract was with them, not the manufactuer, and that bullsh!tting me any further would just result in a very angry me voicing my displeasure in person in the store within 20 minutes, they agreed just to swap it for a new one.

[Larkshall]

After telling them that by law if it's less than 6 months old they have to prove it wasn't faulty at the time of purchase, and that my contract was with them, not the manufactuer, and that bullsh!tting me any further would just result in a very angry me voicing my displeasure in person in the store within 20 minutes, they agreed just to swap it for a new one.

That's telling them!!!

A grand's worth? No computer is worth that, I never go over £400 however good it is. I usually buy end of line ex-demo machines. My present one is an Acer Aspire X3810, Tesco's £360, Staples £235 ex-demo. It does all I want and is fast (I did remove Windows Vista and replaced it with Ubuntu v10.04 (Linux). No expense on software either. You can download anything from our repository, try it and if you like it OK, if not then delete it.

[BarriedaleNick]

A grand's worth? No computer is worth that

Well it does depend to a certain extent what you plan to do with it.  I agree that for 90% of users you are completely right but if you want to play the latest games, run say CS5 design suite, do some heavy video editing or CAD then a grand aint to bad.  Having said that, my work PC gets totally hammered and I didn't spend a grand on that (almost though - dual monitors!)  ;D

[markp2511]

A grand's worth? No computer is worth that

I'm an exhibition designer - CGI work in 3ds max mostly...photo realistic visuals and video walkthroughs, plus construction drawings in CAD and some artwork creation in illustrator and corel.  Usually with at least 3 high end programs running at the same time.  The £1,000 machine was at the low end of what I needed; I could easily spend 3 times that and more for what I'd like to have!

The quad core processor, in a program set up to use it, is a godsend.  I did a test render when I got this one to compare against my (2 year) old machine (a dual core system) and what took 15 minutes to output takes just over a minute.  On average 6 views per job, a conservative estimate of an hour a day saved, and the £1,000 pays for itself in a couple of months.  :)

[Larkshall]

Ah! but what did you do with the hour.

[Palustris]

Not really bothered about the type of machine etc. just wanted help on this problem. So far the crash has not re-occurred so the action recommended seems to be working. Will see if it does after routine Back up and maintainance on Sunday.
Thanks again.

[Palustris]

It has just done it again, but oddly not the first time it was been put into Sleep mode, rather the second time. Wierd!

[Hazelb]

Mine has a similar problem at the moment.

It goes into sleep mode, then after a while it starts sounding like it is running and doesn't respond to the mouse button to wake up.

the only way I can restart it is by doing a hard boot with the start button. It then tells me it wasn't shut down properly.


Is that the sort of thing yours does?

I've tried a couple of things..........

I've found that problems often occur with drivers for HP all -in -one printers, so after checking the error logs i could see the printer driver would try and access the printer ( there isn't one attched!) and get in some sort of loop.

It also kept checking a parallel port looking for a device....and got and error.....so I've made that a manual action...rather than automatic.

I've no idea if what I have done is right..........I'll have to see if it works!!!

I've found a good thing to do is check the error-log and look for a thing called 'Kernel ' It will say things like 'pepering to enter sleep mode' or unable to enter sleep mode and then  you can see the errors that happen afterwards.


.....please note:  I'm one step up ( or is it down? ) from a techno numpty...... ;D

[Palustris]

Computer really crashed this morning so had to take it in for repair. Asked the 'expert' at the shop about this problem. "Yes, we get asked this often." He then explained that the cause could be any one of a 1,000 different things from the machine getting into a loop trying to play the closing down sound and failing to, well almost anything. What works on your machine may not work on another, So far, after the crash and repair, my machine has not done it again. We shall see!