[trainstripes]

Hi I have a machine with windows 7 64-bit professional on it that is having sleep troubles. It seems that sometimes when I put my computer to sleep, it will crash and I'll have to power off and power back on forcefully. One time after putting it to sleep and not realizing for a while that it hung on going to sleep I saw the blue screen of death come up. I've had several other blue screens with the machine since upgrading to windows 7 from vista but this was the first one during sleeping it. Normally what happenes when I sleep the computer and it works fine which is like 9 out of 10 times, the monitors turn off and several of the hard drives turn off with seemingly only the C drive left on to get data cached to it from ram. Then that goes idle for a bit while the computer does something else (presumably getting the rest of the data cached into ram), then the hard drive light will light up once more for a split second while the hard drive and the computer shut off completely. When I press the sleep button and it crashes I'll notice that the monitors turn off like they should but that nothing else seems to turn off. I'll notice the hard drives keep going doing who knows what, and everything else still running. This leads me to suspect a grahics driver problem making it crash. However, I have updated drivers for my graphics card. Can someone help? I've also exprienced a few crashes where during gaming the game will freeze with the noise going into a broken record type loop and stay like that forever unless I force power off. I've attached my last 4 bluescreen dump files for analysis and convenience.

My specs:
Antec 900 gaming case, Asus p6t deluxe, core i7 920 with stock heat sink, 6GB corsair dominator memory in xmp mode, antec truepower 850 psu, xfx geforce 9800gx2 factory overclocked to 680Mhz, 5 hard drives with the C drive being a Western Digital Veloc-rapter 150GB 10,000rpm, LG super-multi SecurDisc lightscribe optical drive.

Attached Files

•  bluescreen_dmp_files.zip   281.76KB   275 downloads

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Hi there,

What is your motherboard' BIOS version? I recommend you to update it to latest version which is 1804 for P6T Deluxe and 0704 for P6T Deluxe V2 at the moment. You can download new BIOS file HERE. Please read how to update BIOS HERE.

[Render]

Hi there,

What is your motherboard' BIOS version? I recommend you to update it to latest version which is 1804 for P6T Deluxe and 0704 for P6T Deluxe V2 at the moment. You can download new BIOS file HERE. Please read how to update BIOS HERE.

[trainstripes]

Here is the data from the SystemBiosVersion registry key:
081009 - 20090810
BIOS Date: 08/10/09 16:04:37 Ver: 08.00.15
BIOS Date: 08/10/09 16:04:37 Ver: 08.00.15

Something about that seems inaccurate to me because I recall when I updated my bios version that it was 18xx also. I had updated less than 6 months ago for another reason so it shouldn't be too terribly outdated. I got the board over a year ago so it's not the stock bios shipped on the board. I could update but do you really think that could fix the problem? It seems as though it's an inconsistent sleep failure. Sometimes it blue screens but I've also seen it just hang forever and not bluescreen. Nobody I know so far has had trouble with windows 7 sleeping but then again nobody I know sleeps thier computer as often as I do between restarts.

[Render]

Hi,

I can't tell you that this will fix your problem for sure, but you can try. I have had similar problem with P6T deluxe V2 and BIOS update fixed this issue. Of course can be something else. So... I still recommend you to flash your motherboard BIOS to latest version and see if there will be some improvements. Good luck.

[trainstripes]

Well I took your advice, or tried to anyways. I think I had downloaded the wrong file but while I was poking around in the BIOS to launch the update utility a thought occurred to me. I went into the power managment and changed the suspend mode from auto to S3 only so that it could never go into S1(POS) mode. If you don't know what the 2 modes are here is an article about them for clarification:
http://en.wikipedia....Power_Interface

After reading this I realized S3 was the only mode you ever want the computer to go into when you push the standby/sleep button so I changed it to that. While S1 should also work just fine and the auto setting should be able to detect which is best to use, I don't fully trust it since I've had trouble with the motherboard's BIOS automatically selecting the right option in the past. I'm hoping that will fix the problems. Then if it still crashes on sleep I'll update my BIOS. I am reluctant to update the BIOS initially because of the slim chance of corrupting the data in it and not only that but the new BIOS version says it "improves memory compatibility". The memory I have in my system was on the qualified vendor list from the start and has been reported as great memory to use with the board since the board's release about a year ago.

[Render]

[Broni]

Desktop, or laptop?

[trainstripes]

Desktop. I don't even know that they make mobile versions of all my parts.

[Broni]

If desktop, don't use any power saving features. Period.
What for?

[trainstripes]

Uhh, it does if you put it into standby/sleep where it tranfers all user os data to ram and re-caches it into the processor when you wake it up again. What for? So you aren't not constantly using energy while you're away from your computer. Same reason I have speedstep enabled in the BIOS rather than keeping the cpu at default speed. Because it uses less power when throttled down. And now this doesn't slow down the computer at all. It is throttled up and down on the fly as soon as the operating system requests processing power. Not only that but since my house is old with many devices wired to a single circuit breaker, if I use my electric oven, microwave, toaster oven, desktop computer, and tv at once the breaker is likely to be tripped. Having my computer use less power decreases that chance and thus the chance of corrupting data from sudden computer shutdown. Another reason: suppose I want to go to sleep at night without loosing or having to quit what I was doing on the computer. If you don't already know, antec fans are pretty noisy and in the 900 there are 4 of them. Not only that, but I have 5 harddrives in my computer which combined make quite a vibration noise; and yes I have them installed correctly.

[Broni]

The problem is, that MS has been never able to master power saving features and often, there are nothing else than a trouble.
What's the reason to keep the computer up while you're sleeping? Turn it off, as most people do.
If you worry about environment issues, there are better ways to take care of it, than putting computer to sleep.
Collect cans, clean beaches, use less energy hungry light bulbs, sell your SUV and buy Prius, etc., etc......

[trainstripes]

I keep the computer in standby rather than turning it off because it's much faster to start it up again when I wake up and I don't loose whatever I was doing. FYI, MS had pretty good cpu power managment in XP. If one selected the "portable/laptop" setting the cpu would throttle up and down in fractions of a second like a mac does. MS has not yet been able to do that with gpus but I think nvidia and ati are starting to do that themselves for their mobile graphics cards. Ever heard of nvidia powermizer for windows? I tried to use that for my desktop as well but it said my graphics card was unsupported. Another reason for sleeping the computer is electric bills. While I do not pay them I like to be courteous and not excessively jack them up. You should try sleep or standby sometime on your computer, you might find it quite nice.

[trainstripes]

Back to the original topic. I have fixed the sleep/wake issue. It seems as though I did not have a secure, reliable connection between my graphics card and my pci-e x16 slot which was probably causing the driver to crash. That and I have replaced the card. It was a pain to install and stretched the motherboard pretty bad because the case holes and the holes on the graphics card bracket are off by about half a screw's width of alignment.