Blogs My PC is a teenager – it won’t wake up in the morning

Regarding PCs waking up from sleep randomly:
1 - turn off the mouse being able to wake the PC, optical/laser mice can be hilariously sensitive
2. check for scheduled tasks. For example win7 windows update defaults to waking the PC to install things at 3AM, AV can do this too

 

My iMac goes to sleep and wakes up perfectly.

 

I've had an issue with mine ever since I built it. I think it's either a motherboard or graphics card bios issue, but I've always been too chicken to flash them with updates. When you restart the PC (and sometimes when you just start it) the screen won't come on. You have to press the reset button again to get it to come on. Very annoying as it did it while was cloning a drive with True Image and it killed the OS installation.

 

Why not suggest I get Mac while you're at it?

As most of the kit in your PC takes power from the 12V rail, I think the 5V is often neglected. But it's a nice reminder for me (and anyone who likes the benefits of Sleep or Hibernate) to check our reviews for 5V rail stability/strength. Nice contribution Isitari!

See my previous post: Windows 7 gave my PC insomnia

 

I've built way more PCs than that and I've never had any problems with hibernate. I've always used it on PC based laptops and UMPCs due to the slow boot times pre win7.

Sleep is another matter though, getting them to wake up on demand depends on the right bios settings and input devices.

 

On Vista never got the hibernate/sleep mode to properly work, after waking it up I had very little time to reboot the pc before it completely stalled just out of nowhere or when rebooting right after waking up, it crashed at the "Shutting off your pc..." screen.

Since 7 I've been able to do that at 100%. Left the power management options default and when I saw the first time the pc went sleeping, got all nervous about crashing. To my surprise, I forgot to reboot and went all night with it on, when shutting off, it was properly done and then I remembered about the hibernate. It just started to work

 

Mine works - it goes to sleep when I press the sleep key ont he keyboard, and wakes up when I press a mouse button.
It's normally fine for about a week, then it'll need a reboot, mostly because Virtualbox won't pick my scanner up any more. (I run a 32-bit Vista VM and pipe my scanner to it cos they never made a 64-bit driver. It still works, so I'm not going to get a new one)

I have found that it wakes up at 8.30am though - but that's just a BIOS setting.

 

I find prayer helps. If that fails throw globs of money at the pc until you have 72 inches of workspace.

 

Hmm - my pc has been going through sleep/wake cycles for about a month without a proper reboot.
Put it to sleep with the front power button at night when I head off to bed, hit the power button when i get up in the morning. Still runs as sweet as a fresh clean boot. it's Win XP, heavily tweaked by me Maybe I'm just lucky

 

When i was a teen i got up at 4 -4:30 and by 6 in the morning i was in the other end of the city preparing my lathe for the day in trade school.

 

Sleep has never worked properly for me, just like most people. Honestly I don't see the purpose in even attempting to use it when it always causes more headaches than not.

Hibernate is usually pretty fast and is much more stable in my experience. Personally though, I always switch off. Saves a little electricity and guarantees a clean boot every time, and it's pretty quick with Win7 even without an SSD.

Put it this way, would you sacrifice 20 seconds each morning to ensure a totally stable boot? If the answer is yes, then always clean boot.

 

Sleep mode is generally incredibly sketchy unless you take the time to disable devices that cause it to turn on randomly.

Hibernate however is awesome for both desktops and laptops.

 

Hey, we're bashing PC's here, don't come with arguments or shiny objects...

 

Good grief.

Just switch it off if you're not using it! Fine, hibernate/sleep uses less energy than just leaving the machine on, but it still uses power.

It's costing you money, it's environmentally indefensible, it hurts performance and it doesn't always work properly. Turn it off, you criminally lazy idiots! It takes less than a minute to turn on a PC!

Pathetic, all of you.

 

Actually hibernate uses zero power
/pedant mode

 

Hibernate (according to Microsoft) uses c.5w for a monitor, and 2.3w for a PC.

That's for business PCs, the numbers for higher power draw home machines won't exactly be any lower.

 

Sure you're not confusing hibernate and sleep?

i just tested it on a laptop:
-hibernate
-unplug AC and remove all batteries for 30+ secs
-re-attach battery and power up
-perfect restore from hibernate...

requiring power for hibernate would pretty much defeat the point of it.

 

Hibernate requires the same amount of power as shutdown, ie 5VSB+whatever your PSU wastes. I presume that's where MS got the numbers from; leaving anything with a transformer in it plugged into the mains, as most people do, uses some power.

 

Both Hibernation and a full shutdown both require a small amount of power to keep the 5VSB rail live.

Have to agree with most sleep on anything other than a laptop is pretty pointless, hibernation seems to work on most desktops but even just one driver issue and both can stop working.

 

And what about those funny jumpers on MB that enable/disable power to USB/PS2 devices during sleep mode?

A little excerpt from mobo manual: "USB device wake-up feature requires a power supply that can provide 500mA on the +5VSB lead for each USB port; otherwise, the system will not power up"

Sleep mode works pretty well on my PC - as long as I click on hibernate button with (USB)mouse. If I press (PS2)keyboard shortcut, the screen will go black but it'll never power down.