[ArielAZ]

I use my Dell PC daily. It had a C: drive hard disk crash (and replacement) in July. This issue predates that crash, however.

 

My PC will (sometimes) lock up while I'm away from it overnight or for 20 or 30 minutes or several hours. At these times, it does not "wake up" when the mouse is moved or the keys are pressed. However, the lights are still on. And (lately at least), I hear the "going down" sound from Skype (or Windows?) when I press the power button to reboot it.

 

I hate doing these hard boots to it, but don't know how else to deal with nothing on the screen and no response. Not even Cntl-Alt-Delete brings up anything.

 

It's still running Windows 8.1, but I plan to upgrade to Windows 10 any time now. What could cause this? 

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sounds like the computer is going to sleep or hibernation. more likely hibernation...which is evil and almost never works correctly. you can turn both off by changing the power settings on the computer

 

http://www.tomshardw...ws-windows.html

[dsenette]

sounds like the computer is going to sleep or hibernation. more likely hibernation...which is evil and almost never works correctly. you can turn both off by changing the power settings on the computer

 

http://www.tomshardw...ws-windows.html

[ArielAZ]

Thank you, dsenette. I had disabled hibernation earlier, in an attempt to fix this issue. But I found a couple more settings to try disabling. Perhaps with "Turn off the display:" set to Never, there will be success. It may take days or weeks to see whether my issue recurs. Let's hope this is finally the solution!

[dsenette]

yeah, if that doesn't fix it let us know we'll look at other possibilities