Vista can't get out of sleep

I'm having an issue in which sometimes, I can't get my HP Vista laptop out of sleepmode. It used to only happen once in a blue moon, but now it happens so often that I just don't use sleep mode. I close the lid to get it in sleep mode. When I open the lid, everything lights up as if it's trying to get out of sleep mode, but then it just stops and I have a black screen.

It's gotten to the point where I have to shut down the computer whenever I am not using it. However, it happens about 3 times a week that when I start up the computer, it comes to a black screen in which I see a short blinking white line at the top left corner of my screen. It just keeps blinking for a while (sometimes it lasts for about 30 seconds, sometimes it can last for close to 4 minutes).


What is wrong here?

Hmmm..... it just happened again. Anyone have any ideas of what I should do?

Tendril said:

I'm having an issue in which sometimes, I can't get my HP Vista laptop out of sleepmode. It used to only happen once in a blue moon, but now it happens so often that I just don't use sleep mode. I close the lid to get it in sleep mode. When I open the lid, everything lights up as if it's trying to get out of sleep mode, but then it just stops and I have a black screen.

It's gotten to the point where I have to shut down the computer whenever I am not using it. However, it happens about 3 times a week that when I start up the computer, it comes to a black screen in which I see a short blinking white line at the top left corner of my screen. It just keeps blinking for a while (sometimes it lasts for about 30 seconds, sometimes it can last for close to 4 minutes).


What is wrong here?

Click to expand...

Try updating the BIOS and drivers (video, audio, NIC, anti-virus...) to their latest respective versions. It's very probable that your symptom is caused by a problematic driver.

I'm kind of new to computers. Is there an easy way to update all of my drivers or do I just go to everything one by one and update them?

I'm also not quite sure what BIOS is or where to find it >.<

Thank you for tolerating my noobish-ness.

Tendril said:

I'm kind of new to computers. Is there an easy way to update all of my drivers or do I just go to everything one by one and update them?

I'm also not quite sure what BIOS is or where to find it >.<

Thank you for tolerating my noobish-ness.

Click to expand...

Everyone is new to computers at some point. There's no reason to apologise, nor to feel out-of-place. It's a help forum

As far as drivers are concerned, you're looking at visiting the website(s) of every hardware vendor who supplied some of the componentry in your machine, downloading the latest driver for the respective component, and then installing it. If I was to use this machine (in front of me) as an example:

Video - www.ati.com, it's a Radeon 1950X (I think!), so I'd need Vista x64 drivers for one of those.

NIC - an Intel gigabit NIC, so I'd get the driver from www.intel.com

And so on. There are utilities available which supposedly do all this for you - usually for $29.95 because that seems to be the limit of credulity for most people - but in my experience they're not worth the money.

Updating the BIOS entails downloading the latest BIOS "image" (a file, basically) from the motherboard manufacturer's website, and then rebooting the machine into a special mode to apply that new image over the old BIOS. It can get a bit tricky and every motherboard manufacturer will have a slightly different procedure.

Overall, if you're not confident doing this, it may be best to ask a computery, nerdy friend to do it. The BIOS update, in particular, can be a bit daunting if you've never done it before, and in a worst-case scenario it could "brick" the PC and render it unbootable if it's not done properly.

On the positive side, I'm fairly confident that yours is a driver issue, so updating may help.

Thanks a lot. I greatly appreciate it. :D

p.s.---btw---should I set my laptop in 'sleep' mode when away from it for few hrs/day or just shut it down?---(I do use shut down mode at night - so it cools off)---