For laptop users, one of the major things I’ve noticed extremely convenient is it’s portability, and even more so when a netbook is being used. But they aren’t without their flaws. Fragile and easy to break are the reasons why I know for a fact I’d never be able to go around with a Netbook, and it’s not hard to see that those would also carry over to a laptop as well. If you’re careful, sure the laptop lasts longer, but in the end, most times, it will always work out cheaper to buy a new laptop then to face and fix that old one. However, if you don’t have the money, often times, you’re out of luck and will need to stick to what you’ve got. I was looking at a netbook to replace this present laptop and with the cheapest one being around $350 for even half decent specs, I’ve forced to keep what I’ve got, with all it’s bugs.
And it’s actually one of these bugs that has annoyed me last night, the fact that I shut my computer lid and it didn’t go to sleep. Instead, it remained on all last night, so when I came back to my computer after sleeping, I found that the battery had completely drained and I had a battery that was now dead. Considering that I was going to take this laptop with me when I went out to get it registered with the Canadian government (so when I come back from my trip, I don’t get charged for it), I now couldn’t do that.
So, instead, I looked for a way to restore sleep to my laptop if you close the laptop lid. The first thing I tried was resetting my power plans back to their defaults, but if you’ve had this problem before, you might have run into the same issue I did: it didn’t work. So I figured it was time to get inventive, and head into Device Manager.
Our old friend, Device Manager
At this point, I then proceeded to remove the Mobile Intel(R) 965 Express Chipset driver, and re-install it. Before rebooting, I also grabbed the BIOS update that was off Gateway’s official support site and ran it as well, before being forced to reboot once the update was completed. Once back into Windows 7, I was able to test and see if I was able to put it into sleep mode, with no problems whatsoever. So the quick and dry solution that I’ve worked out to work for this problem is as follows:
- Remove graphic card driver though Device Manager
- Reinstall the driver
- Flash to updated BIOS if you can
- Reboot
It took me about ten minutes to go though all of this, so if you’re pressed for time, this won’t take long at all to complete and you’ll be ready to go around with your laptop once more. However, take care in flashing your computer’s BIOS. This might cause problems down the road which is why most BIOS flashing applications will back up your BIOS before hand, but just make sure to keep it in mind.
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@Mahesh, in case whatever software install that caused the problem somehow switched Hibernation off you can always try manually re-enabling it.
In Vista/W7:
Go to a command prompt and type
powercfg /hibernate on
To reverse use;
powercfg /hibernate off
For XP:
First, make sure that the system has hibernation enabled. To confirm that, Click the Start button, go to Run menu and type in Powercfg.cpl and click OK.
In the Power Options Properties click the Hibernate tab and make sure that Enable hibernation option is checked. Click OK/Apply.
Then Click the Start button, go to Run menu and type all on one line the following;
%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState
and click OK.
To manually force the hibernate state immeduately in xp
Click the Start button, go to Run menu and type all on one line the following;
%windir%\System32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState Hibernate
and click OK.
You could also create a shortcut with the above line so that you can force Hibernate from the desktop whenver you want.
After installing some software(i dont remember which one) my sony vaio just refuses to go into hibernation. It just comes back to the login screen. Please help.
Thanks in advance. Your site rocks.
Mahesh
@Alan, this was geared for laptops….
@Decent60, I’ve had no problems with their desktops! It’s their laptops I’m having a bad track record with! Heck, my old PC desktop I’m using for my Linux testing is stable and worked with Windows fine.
I’ve never had a problem with any of the newer laptops (from 2005 and on) about not going to sleep when the lid shuts. However, I’ve had plenty of problems with Gateway computers not doing what they are supposed to be doing haha!
This is what i was looking at.
awesome Post.
i’m afraid of bios Update.
can someone please pour some light on this for Laptop & Netbook ?
@Dan S, it’s another option as well, yes. That was covered when I touched on the laptop battery not charging, linked here.
you shold also check de ACPI driver. most often that’s the main source of power management related problems ;)
Thanks Paul\HellNoire. Two of my friends had same issue a month ago. Updating their Laptop graphic card driver (downloaded from Intel site directly) solved the problem. BIOS update is somewhat risky task for novice users. Please update your article and include warning and precautionary measures for BIOS update.