Can't wake PC out of sleep sometimes

[Sonikku]

My mother has a windows vista dell that she uses for email and word processing. Sometimes though when it goes to sleep I can't wake it. The blue led light will start blinking. (I can still hear the fan spinning) I'll press and hold the power button to shut it off and turn it back on, at which point the cpu fan throttles into some kind of crazy 3000rpm speed that is loud as all hell, but still the monitor does not even light up. Not so much as a boot screen.

No beeps either, not that it has ever beeped even on a successful boot all the past years it had no problems. My gut is telling me it's the power supply but I can't be sure and have no spares to test it on. It's working now actually, but this happens occasionally enough to be a hassle. The only work around seems to be leaving it powered down for half an hour or so and powering it back on again.

Any ideas?

 

[Yuriman]

I've had this on a couple of machines before. Some of them will reboot immediately if I shut off the power at the plug, while others need to cycle a few times. My best guess is that it's a motherboard thing in my cases.

 

[sm625]

The only work around seems to be leaving it powered down for half an hour or so and powering it back on again.

Any ideas?

Unplugging the power cord for a few seconds should also reset it. But that isnt exactly a mom-friendly solution. I once had my mom unplug her pc and plug it back in and the procedure took like 7 minutes over the phone.

Check if hibernation is enabled. It could be that sleep is working ok but hibernation is not. Also, if the machine is low power enough, you might consider disabling sleep and only letting it turn the display off.