Windows 7 blank screen after resume from sleep.

Hi there,

I'm not sure why this started happening but it's intermittent - doesn't always happen. I was unsure whether to put this thread in the Alienware forum or here.

I've an Alienware m17x R3 and the lid close action is set to 'sleep' be it plugged in or on battery. It's always been like that - I've not changed it and it suits me fine.

However, recently Windows shows a blank screen upon resume when I open the lid again - I've no idea why. Not always but more times than not it seems.

I've seen suggestions upon googling about setting a fixed paging file size - to the recommended size and also reinstalling the video driver but wanted to garner a wider range of opinion in case it's something definite causing this that I can resolve easily.

Thanks

edit: forgot to add - I can hear the hard drive doing stuff but the only way I can seem to sort this out once it happens is to hold the power button for 4 seconds so it shuts off and then power it back up again.

 

If you put it to sleep/resume once again, the screen should relight. Everything does resume but the screen, so a hard reset is too harsh of a method.

 

I didn't think of trying that. Simple as it might be, I'll give it a go next time it happens. Odd why it appeared to suddenly start happening but if that sorts it, I'll be happy - thanks

 

You're welcome, I hope it helps. When I experienced this problem before, I was unable to pinpoint the problem. Having an SSD system I don't sleep it anymore. But I have also reduced my pagefile to 16MB min. and 2048MB max., unfortunately I haven't tested to see if this helps toward resolving that issue.

The second machine in my signature doesn't experience this problem and it has an AUOptronics WLED LCD. This one is LG RGB LCD where it occurred previously, and I have experienced it on another exact machine with LG WLED. Not sure if any conclusions can be drawn here....

 

Unfortunately, when this happened again - it didn't go back to sleep. Power stayed on, lights and everything even though lid was down (I waited a while to be sure).

I've tried one of the google answers from Microsoft's site - that of disabling / re-enabling hibernation by use of a 'run as administrator' command prompt and then the powercfg.exe /hibernate off (and back on again).

Will see if that helps. Using a disk checker, I see that doing that has moved the hiberfil.sys file towards the end of the disk which doesn't sound good for sleeping. Perhaps I'll do what you have done too and limit the paging file in case that also is interfering.

As to your situation with your machines - odd it would be if it turned out to be related to the screen. Just in case I get SSDs in the future or in a future machine - are there issues with sleeping if you have SSDs?

 

I get "sudden power off" reported in the SSD SMART details when I sleep it (I don't think it means anything serious though). It took me awhile to not want to shut off the computer at night but now I'm accustomed to leaving it on 24/7 unless I'm going move it. I tend to think that turning anything off allows it to cool and then it will warm back up when on (contraction/expansion of circuit components and metals when this is done, and also the same get flooded/surged with start electricity). I just close the lid with the setting set to "do nothing" on lid close.

I don't think you need a hiberfile.sys to sleep the computer. Sleep doesn't save data to disk and a power source must be always present. With hibernate you can unplug and remove the battery when in a hibernated state then later restore power and resume where you left off.

Edit: the sudden power offs are the POR recovery count. I didn't have that attribute's name when I wrote above.

 

That's a fair point as regards the contraction/expansion of components possibly causing things to eventually malfunction. I do leave mine on more often than not.

Fair point on hiberfile. As I never hibernate - I may as well turn that off again and recover a little disk space eh.

As to my issue, the fact that it has happened recently got me thinking. In the alienware forum I posted about an issue I had that turned out to be some blockage of dust that I couldn't see.

During attempts to fix that issue - I changed to various different versions of the Nvidia drivers. I was currently running on an older one recommended as being one that was probably going to keep my GPU a bit happier.

However, this may have caused the side effect of the sleep issue perhaps - so for the time being at least, I've changed to the latest driver and will see if it happens again.

 

I've definitely seen this behavior due to bad drivers.


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