Yet another computer question...
 

I had to take down my computer system so the room could be cleared out for new flooring.

I've hooked it back up and got it started OK. Only problem is, it is having a hard time waking up from 'sleep' mode.

I'm running Win 8.1 64-bit on an AMD A8-5500 with a Radeon HD Graphics 3.20 GHz and 8GB's of RAM.

Is there something I can check to see why it isn't waking up?

When it tries to wake up, the screen shows the desktop photo but none of the icons for programs show up, nor in the task bar at the bottom.

Is my HD about to take a dump on me?

Thanks in advance for any help.

I'm starting to think I got lucky in that I didn't have to label any of the wires. My stereo may be another story though.

You might try starting it in "safe mode" to see what happens. Sometimes Windows will not start up completely if it is trying to do OS updates if they have not been done in a while or other words the Windows takes control away from you.

If you want to try this it might also work. Try starting and let it sit a while then do ctrl-alt-del and start the task manager. Look to see if "Windows Explorer" is running in the "processes" column. If not then select file -> run new task and select Windows Explorer. I think the OS can't read you directory named "Desktop" on your "C" drive under your user ID?

Thanks for the reply John.
I'll give it a try later today.
Still overwhelmed with the disruption of the flooring exercise.
My computer does seem to be responding quicker than it did before, so maybe it was a good thing that I exercised all the connections some. It'd been years since some of those connectors were apart.

I let the computer go to sleep and tried waking it up. Desktop came up without icons. Task bar icons were not there and it didn't show icon for computer being connected to internet. I hit control/alt/delete and got a blue screen. Nothing after that so I shut it off via the power strip. Turned it back on and logged in as usual. Changed the screen saver to 'Show login screen' on waking and it seemed to work fine when it went to sleep.
I just got a pop-up from AVG saying I have 181 broken registry items.
Maybe I'll run that and see if that helps.

Hey Scott, I've had similar situations as well. If the suggestions given so far don't pan out, here's what I did that worked for me, but it was a while ago and not with Windows 8.1 (I refuse to use/install it.)

What I did was reset/reboot the computer to an earlier date. I'm sorry I can't remember the exact procedure but there are certain benchmark points that the computer will go back to. All files, programs, and updates are removed from that benchmark date forward and the computer boots up as if it was that date. I believe I accessed the steps by booting in safe mode but, again, I can't remember the exact way to access the reboot to a previous date. Hopefully someone can give you the steps or you can Google it with another computer.

Hope all is good with you--long time, no see!

Edit: I just did a brief search and apparently System Restore is not available with Windows 8.1! Sorry. Maybe there's another way someone knows.

I must have a 'self-healing' computer of some sort. It went into screen saver mode once this morning and it was flashing all kinds of color test patterns, blue screens, white screens too. Wouldn't come out of that mode so I shut it down again.
After playing around with the internet connection (yeah, the router etc had to be taken down for the floors too, lucky me) I changed the screen saver program back to normal, ie NOT the login screen since it's only me on this computer. So far, it's worked OK (there I jinxed didn't I?).
I ran a diagnostic with AVG or was it CCleaner and got a bunch of registry listing that aren't any good, supposedly. But, being cheap I don't have a program to remove them. I did photograph them so I could look them up later and remove them, but haven't downloaded the pictures yet.
Now all that's left is to tackle my wife's computer. Different Win OS, I think it's running Win 7. Wish me luck.

I did jinx it.
After a long sleep, it wouldn't awaken. sigh.
Back to the drawing board as they say....

Hey Scott....I'd like to see a pic of your new shag carpeting at some point, if you get a sec.

:D

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1558492205.JPG

Here you go Baz.
That block of wood is the old color of the beams in the family room. It is now all mono-chrome white.

Consider using a registry cleaner and also Defrag.

Thanks Joe, I just tried a reg cleaner. We'll see what happens now.

Downloaded a reg cleaner last nite and ran it.
Walked away from the computer this morning after doing my daily routine of checking different sites and it went to sleep. Came back and touched the space bar and IT WOKE UP just fine!
I think it may be OK now, but, only time will tell.

My Win7 computer would not wake up from sleep mode either about 70-90% of time.
I tried all different combos to see what "saved it" from the auto-restart sequence mode. Never did find out.

Usually, spending less time in sleep mode equated to less restarts, so I was suspecting the 2032 CMOS battery for some reason.
I replaced that on the MB and on next bootup the whole system crashed.
Then it was time for a complete overhaul thanks to that stack of Windows backup DVDs being completely useless even though I followed the rules.
Kicking myself for not researching first before changing things around.

Besides the battery I suspected a bad video card/MB or driver because there were some funky artifacts happening on screen.
Or it was simple Microsoft sabotage.

If the fix holds. You probably need to defrag as well.
I also suggest deleting you temp files by going to Sart/Run/%temp% (let me know if you need more explanation).
Delete all. If the system refuses to delete certain files then let them be.

Looks great, Scott!

I was just making a joke about the shag carpeting - but I guess you figured that out.

Good luck with the computer issue. Love my computer but when stuff isn't working it drives me crazy! :rolleyes:

Short trip?
Sorry no reflection on you, I just couldn't resist the softball opportunity. Feel free to throw one back at me.

I may have spoken too soon. It did it again. And now the new firefox update wants to take over everything. sigh. I've almost got the stereo system back in place. What a hassle this has been. I'm not going to jinx my wife's computer and tell you it's working since she says it's slow(er) compared to before.
I'll keep plugging away at it. Nothing better to do till I get my camera battery charged up, but that will have to wait for the stereo to be finished.

Ha - good one, Joe. Indeed a short trip - no green font needed!

Some days you're the pitcher...other days you're the catcher.

The way things are going today - I'm the catcher. ;)

No worries Baz. Now you have the ball. Run with it!

Just to update this thread. I ran a check of the HD via the Win disk management software. It found the disk had errors and said to repair and recheck after restarting the computer. I asked it to repair and an HP app(?) took over and checked/repaired before restarting the computer.
Will just have to wait and see how it reacts to this.

You just mentioned an "HP App" so I am guessing you have a HP computer? In my work as an Oracle DBA the only servers we had issues wwith were ones made by HP. It seems they have 5 or 6 running Apps or processes and every time we had problems it was due to those background programs. One in particular would log onto HP looking for updates and such and would use 75% power or more for some reason? We used to disable any and all HP running Apps which never caused issues but did make the server run way better.

John, Yes, I have an HP computer. I'm not sure if it was an HP app or not. The screen had the HP label on it, but it looked like it might just have been a very basic low level screen ie nothing was running. It had the 'circle' of spiralling balls going around on it, which I think is MS doing its thing.

I've been playing around some, took the side cover off and vac'd out the computer, removed the heat sink/fan from the cpu and cleaned it, cleaned the heat sink on the video card too.
On booting up after that I got a message that said Windows didn't load correctly what did I want to do. Got all the way into refreshing but backed down at the last screen.
How do I go about reloading Windows from the recovery portion of my HD?
It says it won't mess with my files.
OK, I'm good with that.
Does that mean it will just re-load Windows from that partition onto the 'main' partition?
When looking at device manager(?) I saw that HP Assistant takes up a lot of CPU time/space. I thought I'd disabled that a long time ago. Guess not.

Did ya try banging on it really hard?
Sometimes that helps ;)

Numerous times sammy, numerous times.

Did a little digging on the interwebs and came up with a possible fix. I've changed the power handling characteristics and set them to where the computer never shuts off the hard drive when going into sleep mode. So far that has worked OK.
I also usually will tell the computer to go to sleep via the start up button on the task bar, the one that gives the options of shutting down, sleep, restart, and what I've found is, using that, the hard drive shuts off. I've done it twice that way and it's started up both times. Just trying to update this in case someone is interested/has the same problem.

I also used to have "Broken registry items error". So I googled and here is what I have found out https://www.devicetricks.com/fix-broken-registry-items/ . Broken registry items are usually from software that has been uninstalled, but the uninstaller didn't remove completely. Most uninstallers do not do a good job of completely cleaning things up.

I have a similar problem with my Desktop running Windows 10. But a lot of the time the desktop is "frozen". Try right clicking on the desktop. That seems to wake it up.

I just never let it go into 'sleep' mode any more, James. Seems to work fine doing that. Sometimes I put it to sleep deliberately and it'll wake up just fine. Other times not, so it never sleeps much.
Now, sometimes in the morning if it's been really cool at night, it doesn't boot up, just has a blue then white then red(?) screen flashing. When it does that I just kill the power and push the button again. If it doesn't start after that, rinse and repeat.
What can I say?
Chrsitmas is coming soon so I may treat myself to a new computer this year.

The HD might be worn out.
If not, at least you will have another fresh hardware backup of the data and OS.

There are some various disk imaging/cloning/migration software out there.

I had no luck after purchasing a separate $55, one-use-only, internet-required, Acronis disk in a box.
What a waste.
I previously cloned a HD with included free Acronis software and it worked perfectly.
Things must have changed.

No experience, but one HD manufacturer looks like they include this software with their new HD.
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/download/tools/


(edit: Platter drive to SSD requires a little extra tweaking to make it work. IDK. Above my skill set.)

To prevent any sleeping/wakeup issues I set both the computer and my 40 inch flat screen monitor to NEVER to go sleep. At night when done and no over night movie creations or stuff I will just press the "FN" key + "F11" and the ASUS motherboard goes right to sleep, shutting off video, hard drives, ETC. I also then just turn off the monitor with the remote.

As for what HP services, Apps, Processes, ETC are running, startup the Task Manager and look for everything that starts with the letters "HP" and disable them. If not sure, do a quick web search to see what they are.

It only had 3 HP things running when I checked it just now. All disabled now but I haven't tried to put it to sleep yet.