Help with a Windows 7 issue

My husband just got a new computer about 3 months ago and it goes into this wierd sleep or hybernation mode and won't come out of it. Even unplugging it, I have to leave it unplugged for at least a full minute or it won't boot...not even to the BIOS start up screen. I did some searching around and found out that there's some kind of strange hybrid hybernation it goes into. So I found that and turned it off. I made every suggested change that I could find, I changed all the settings so that nothing, not the disk, monitor, nothing goes to sleep at all. Every setting I can find is set to never sleep or shut off.

It's still doing it and I am pulling my hair out to get it to stop. He uses it for web surfing only and hasn't installed any software on it at all, aside from antivirus. Last week, he restored the image from the backup drive it came with and...nope, nada, nothing. Still does it. It's a basic off-the-shelf HP running Win7 home.

Any suggestions or could his computer be faulty (aside from the fact that it's windows

If youve played with all the power management settings to no avail then it sounds like a hardware fault to me.
Send it back...

what did your husband bevor the PC goes in that "mode" ?

any installations?

if nothing helps...unplugg it...put out the small batterie on motherboard..wait 10 min

CMOS should be resetet after that....

reply to post by CoherentlyConfused


Try opening a command prompt and typing the following command:
powercfg -H off

This is supposed to turn hibernation off completely within Windows.

You don't mention if it's a laptop or not - Either way you should be able to find some power-save settings in the BIOS and turn it off.
But be careful about what you do in there. Remember to take notes about what settings you are changing - It's the perfect way to screw up a system changing stuff you don't know what is

reply to post by jafo1984


Thanks, I haven't tried that. If that doesn't fix it, I'll just tell him to send it back. It came with a 1 year warranty, so I'm not going to spend too much time with it--not worth it. I thought maybe there was a setting somewhere I was missing. I don't know windows 7 at all--only the limited time I've spent on his machine. Thanks for your replies!

If all the settings have been changed and it still doesn't work, it should be a hardware problem.

Just to make sure, I added a screenshot to find out if you have changed the settings in the advanced settings as well. I'm unsure if it is the same on Win7 home, as i run a different version.
But just wanting to make sure you haven't overlooked something.

Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Advanced Settings

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/181a5df45cf1.jpg[/atsimg]

Are all the items changed in your power plan?

I see there is a hybrid sleep setting there as well. Something i never knew existed.
I learnt something new today

Are all those settings changed? It should then be a hardware problem if so.
Hope I was some help

Surf safe and get rid of your AV software.

You'll be amazed at how sneaky and counter-productive they can be.

reply to post by Jubjub


Been in the BIOS, can't find anything anywhere that would be set to do this. Another annyoing thing it does on a daily basis is the graphics card freezes to the point where unplugging it is the only way out. I am leaning towards the whole problem being a faulty graphics card. (which I did try disabling and reinstalling the latest driver for, to no avail.)

reply to post by dyllels


Yeah, got all those. Those were my first go-tos.

reply to post by CoherentlyConfused


Good stuff. Just wanted to make sure.
That being said, the problem is now way above my basic computer knowledge.

I hope the computer whizzes on here can help you out and it gets fixed soon.
Good luck

Go to filehippo.com, which is a good clean site, and download "malwarebytes anti-malware". Install it, decline the trial mode, update it, and run the quick scan.

Also download "ccleaner" and run it as is. Don't change any settings. Be sure to uncheck the boxes to install other software during installation. Also say no to retaining any cookies when it asks.

You could have display hijackers among other things. If that doesn't help, post back here, and I can help you through the next steps to take.

I am a certified technician btw.

Originally posted by Klassified
Go to filehippo.com, which is a good clean site, and download "malwarebytes anti-malware". Install it, decline the trial mode, update it, and run the quick scan.

Also download "ccleaner" and run it as is. Don't change any settings. Be sure to uncheck the boxes to install other software during installation. Also say no to retaining any cookies when it asks.

You could have display hijackers among other things. If that doesn't help, post back here, and I can help you through the next steps to take.

I am a certified technician btw.

edit on 6/8/2011 by Klassified because: (no reason given)

edit on 6/8/2011 by Klassified because: (no reason given)

edit on 6/8/2011 by Klassified because: restate for the grammar police

im surprised a certified technican give such kind of useless info :S....

sorry but malwarebytes is crap and ccleaner do more harm for someone who dont know whats to do than anything else..

just my 2 cent...sorry

did you try to reset CMOS?

reply to post by angrydog

You're entitled to your opinion. And I won't begrudge you for that. But I have built, maintained, repaired, and designed more systems in my career than most people will ever see in a lifetime. I know at least a little bit about computers.

reply to post by CoherentlyConfused


Your first mistake was buying an HP.

imo it sounds like a thermal problem. Could be CPU or some other component overheating and shutting down the computer.
I had a similar problem on my old AMD system. It turned out the heatsink wasn't making proper contact with the cpu which caused the chip to overheat.

When I said it shut down the computer, well it didn't do it in the normal way like through windows. Instead it just switch off the cpu but the power led stayed on and it wouldn't respond to hitting the reset button. I had to do the same thing as op did, disconnecting the power for a period and reconnecting to get it to boot.

It might be worth checking the temps in the bios..

Thanks all for your replies. Yes, I know HP isn't great but it's not mine. Apparently, it has keyboard and mouse issues, too, which I wasn't aware of, so it could be an issue with the MB. I did try resetting the BIOS but that didn't work and neither did the suggestion above for the powercfg setting. At this point, it's his problem.

MY computers work just spiffy. I am a certified computer tech, too but I've been out of the game for the past 8 years or so and haven't done more than fooling with my own stuff. I'm a bit rusty. MOST of the time, I can figure out a problem but this issue could be caused by a number of things and, well, he can deal with it.

Thanks, y'all.

reply to post by CoherentlyConfused


Hello friend, I hear you. Recently a lady friend of mine bought a brand new E-Machines ET1331G desktop. Had the same problem. She would walk away for a few minutes to go to bathroom or something, and come back to find her computer in such a deep sleep shaking the mouse would no wake it up, and this necessitates a hard shut down. I played with the power settings until I was blue in the face, all to no avail. Went online for some research, and discovered I am not the only one with this problem either. Seems that Windows 7 just ignores power settings on some computers. After discussing her options, I installed Windows Vista Ultimate for her. Power settings are a snap in Vista, and Windows remembers them.

Another thing is windows 7 does not play well with some dial up configurations. In my area, we have a lot of dial up people, the cable only goes so far in the Mountains. Of late I have had some 7 or 8 people bring me a new computer with Windows 7 on it and complain that cannot make the dial up work. Everyone went back to either XP or Vista, and on them is works great as always. I am not saying 7 is bad, my sister in law runs it on her Toshiba laptop with wireless, and she loves it. My wife with the same laptop insisted on Linux, she hates Microsoft products.

Thought I'd put a happy (albeit embarrassing) ending on this issue. Seems it was a flash player problem. *insert face palm here*. What was happening was it wasn't hibernating or sleeping, it was actually a BSOD (blue screen) error caused by flash. But what threw me off was that the screen would just go black, as if it had shut off. It took some digging around to put two and two together but the extremely simple fix was to uninstall and reinstall Adobe Flash.

At least, I hope but it hasn't happened since yesterday morning. This is why I hate computers.

just wanted to chime in on this thread. one thing the OP didn't mention was if they've tried to reset the bios settings to the defaults and then ran HP recovery disks for their laptop. has this been done already? and what's the specific model of the laptop in question. the info i've requested would make the folks in this thread better able to assist the OP in troubleshooting the problem.