E6410 and Windows 8.1 - can't come out of standby

I put an SSD in my E6410 a few months ago and installed Windows 8. Everything went smoothly - Dell had Windows 8 certified drivers for everything, and I didn't have any problems with any hardware.

However, after updating to 8.1, my machine absolutely will not come out of standby. Once it goes to sleep, something with the display and/or video card locks up, and it will turn on, but the screen won't turn on. I've even tried remoting into it via RDP and TeamViewer (the network comes back online after waking from sleep), and the screen is still black.

I'm fairly certain I'm running the latest Nvidia drivers, too. Has anyone else had this problem?

 

Its funny you say this, because the EXACT same symptoms happened to me 4 weeks ago. I had just updated my NVIDIA drivers and then the system could not wake up. Once I rolled back the drivers, the screen woke, but was frozen at the metro login background. Then, after one more restart, the SSD (120GB Corsair Force GT) died (which, fortunately, was just a day before I got a free MBP from school). I just got the SSD back from RMA 3 days ago so I will be putting Windows 8.1 on today, and I'll see how it goes. Hopefully your SSD doesn't also die.

 

Same problem on my M4800 - I noticed it when I updated the BIOS. Rolling back one version of the BIOS helped. The M4800 is new, so I am waiting for the next update and will try that. I'm not sure how helpful that is to you, but it sounds like the same issue, or a very similar one.

 

I forgot to update, but on my E6410 it was due to the Nvidia driver. Download the newest one from the Dell site instead of Nvidias site and install that and it should be fine.

Quite disappointing to hear about that on the M4800, there just seem to be so many unexpected things about that system.

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

 

If anyone finds this from searching online...

It took a few tries before I found the right drivers, but I can more or less definitively confirm that the 326.19 drivers direct from NVIDIA work well. Unlike the older 2010 drivers others might recommend, this driver doesn't cause any graphical glitches in Windows 8.1. I've been able to go in and out of sleep multiple times without the machine crashing once. These are the newest drivers that work. NVIDIA's site indicates they are only certified for Windows 8, not 8.1, but I've been using them with 8.1 Enterprise for a few days now without any problems.

You can download it here.