Filed under: Computing | Tags: comatose, dell laptop, hard reset, rebuild, resume failure, roaming profile, sleep, windows vista
Ever since I returned from Canada, well maybe a few days after to be exact, my Dell laptop at work has returned to the same behaviour it had before being reimaged back in September, although thankfully unlike back then it still has its networking. Back then, as now, the Dell laptop after an extended period of inactivity fails to resume from sleep in Windows Vista, I move the mouse which brings the screen’s backlighting on, the hard disk’s activity light is certainly running, but the keyboard has no responsiveness and I never get presented with anything other than a black screen (or rather dark grey given it is LCD after all).
My only solution is to do a hard reset, holding the power button down for 5 seconds, start the laptop, but then it wants to instantly resume Windows Vista once more, upon which I get the same blackened screen once more, forcing me to hard reset again, the second time doing so actually gets me an option to delete the resume data and start a new boot to Windows Vista. I’ve given up and yesterday called for IT Services to come an look at the laptop, which they’re doing late Monday. I just can’t imaging that it’s a Windows problem, surely, it only got rebuilt in September for crying out loud, wondering whether it might be a possible fault in the laptop causing Windows to not sleep properly? Other possibility is that the original problem has carried forward from the roaming profiles we have (HATE!) and been reapplied.
Hopefully Monday they can take it away and get to the bottom of this. Might get them to delete roaming profiles for me, hopefully that will eliminate the problem.
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Well I.T. came and took the beast away late this afternoon, they’re planning to run a series of hardware tests against the machine rather than just doing a re-image against the machine as has only just been done in September. I suggested that if they poured water into the machine I’d be most happy with their level of service. I’ll be interested in any case to see what the result of their tests are, I do suspect they’ll find something, for it to have these ‘coma’ problems after an recent re-image is just weird. The only other possibility I can think of is that my roaming profile has brought the problems back into Windows that way, who knows. Time will certainly tell!
Comment by g04uld November 21, 2011 @ 7:12 pmSince the laptop was sent away for tests it came back having passed, or rather did not fail, the tests. The IT CSO suggested we first try not running the atop on the dock as occasionally the docking station has been known to be at fault. Initially doing so went well, I went 4 days without a single coma style sleep state, this despite leaving it for the desired period when going for my lunch break and meetings. My natural skepticism was actually being tested, was I going to have to eat my words here?
Sadly, on the 5th day the coma sleep state returned, why I don’t know, but it did, and I was forced to call our IT Service Desk once more to have them again look at the computer and see what we might do. My assigned CSO was away sick and the new CSO determined that we delete my local profile and create a new one and see how we go. As I didn’t leave the computer for long enough until this Monday I didn’t have it slip into a coma until then, and this solution sadly has failed. Before Daniel returned again this morning he had called DELL to discuss the problems I’d been experiencing, they’ve now suggested that one possible solution is to install an updated BIOS which he’s taken the computer to do today.
The problem in the past has been that their own logins have never been able to reproduce the coma sleep with this computer, it is only my own login that produces it. When he rang again this afternoon to check my availability tomorrow morning he again had not been able to reproduce the coma sleep with a non-IT generic staff account login. Hopefully his leaving the laptop to run overnight will cause it to trigger, it would be nice for this damned machine to show them the coma sleep just once as not once have I been able to demonstrate it to them due to its taking 45-60 minutes waiting to occur. DELL have also said that the only other solution should the BIOS update fail is to replace the motherboard, just as well I am to go on annual leave from Wednesday next week, isn’t it!
Comment by g04uld December 6, 2011 @ 7:07 pm