Computer won't wake up from "sleep"

[delussional77]

I'll try to keep this short:

AMD 4800+
Gigabyte AM2 mobo
Windows XP Pro
OS/Program Drive: 6 year old 80Gb IDE!
4Gb's of ram
ATI 3450 Video Card
Approx age of latest build: 2.5 months

Ok,

So a few months ago I consolidated a pair of decent computers into one uber-computer. I upgraded the mobo/ram/video/ and added some additional SATA HD's. I have been using my trusty 80Gb IDE drive that I first got 6 years ago in an HP desktop.

I have XP pro installed and for first 2 months everything has been running smoothly.

The last few days though if I leave the computer for a few hours (like when I go to work) I will come back and the screen saver will be active (never was before!) and moving the mouse/ hitting keys on the keyboard refuses to wake the computer up.

I would then reach over and re-start the computer. Occassionally the BIOS boot screen would blank out on the "Detecting IDE drives" and I'd have to restart. Additionally, occassionally it would hang in the "loading WINDOWS XP" boot up screen.

I have disabled all of my hibernate/sleep settings. I want this thing on and running 24/7.

Any ideas?

Is my old ass IDE drive causing the problem?
is there a setting in my mobo BIOS that is causing everything to sleep?

Remember, I have had this computer running smoothly for a few months before this problem started. I don't believe I changed anything.

 

[Swampster]

If you're running a 6 year old IDE drive 24/7, then yes, I would suspect a drive starting to go south. Test it with the manufacturer's diagnostic software and see what it gives for temps etc. Also, if SMART isn't turned on in the BIOS then I would recommend activating it.

Actually, running ANY HDD 24/7 without allowing it to sleep (and cool down) is just asking for an early failure.

 

[delussional77]

I do actually have SMART enabled and the temperatures have normally read fine.

I'm assuming that the drive has gone south, but I'd like to hear a few other people's comments before I splurge on the 300Gb Raptor!

It is strange though how the drive acts perfectly fine when I'm at the computer. I hear no clicking or odd sounds. Performance is still quite good. Yet, when I don't touch the drive for a while it has problems...

 

[potato28]

Originally posted by: Swampster
If you're running a 6 year old IDE drive 24/7, then yes, I would suspect a drive starting to go south. Test it with the manufacturer's diagnostic software and see what it gives for temps etc. Also, if SMART isn't turned on in the BIOS then I would recommend activating it.

Actually, running ANY HDD 24/7 without allowing it to sleep (and cool down) is just asking for an early failure.

I've run my 3 drives 24/7 for a few months now, no problems on the oldest which is a 7200.7 .

OP: What about the power supply? There are a lot of things that can go wrong from just the power supply starting to go. If your PSU is 6 years old too...

 

[delussional77]

i've considered the power supply (it's a bit overworked for whats in my system).

I have a spare power supply that I have been meaning to wire in.

Another thought. On the same IDE cable is an NEC DVD burner that is set to "cable select". The suspect IDE drive is set to "master". Both of these settings are via the jumpers.

 

[seemingly random]

I've had similar, but not identical, problems with the pc going to sleep and not waking up. On a laptop with an intel cpu, I had xp mc, with sp2 and all subsequent updates, running for a year. A couple of months ago, I installed sp3. Things were fine for a week or so. Then the sleep problem arose. I just reformatted/reloaded from cd and installed sp3. Haven't had a problem waking from sleep yet. At this point, I can't say whether it was sp3 or something else.

Probably unrelated, but on an amd pc with vista32, I've occasionally had problems with the minimum processor state in power options mysteriously getting set to 100%. It seems that after being set four or five times to something else (5% in my case), vista will remember. I know this sounds crazy but it's happened on two different pc's.

 

[delussional77]

interesting update:

I tried to think of any computer changes that I had made recently which could have caused this weird anomaly. I had recently installed a Logitech Quick Cam and let windows install the necessary related software.

Un-plugging the USB input from my USB hub and subsequently uninstalling all the logitech bloatware has made the problem go away.

Anyone ever heard of this?

 

[potato28]

Originally posted by: delussional77
interesting update:

I tried to think of any computer changes that I had made recently which could have caused this weird anomaly. I had recently installed a Logitech Quick Cam and let windows install the necessary related software.

Un-plugging the USB input from my USB hub and subsequently uninstalling all the logitech bloatware has made the problem go away.

Anyone ever heard of this?

I'm not sure, but does Windows still run itself behind the sleep mode? Might have been you didn't have enough RAM or something if it does that.

 

[delussional77]

I have 4Gbs of ram (and only a 32bit system) on XP...I should have plenty of ram.

 

[Swampster]

Yes, Logitech as well as Microsoft input software can cause all sorts of problems with sleep as well as screen savers.

You may have 4GB installed, and it may show up as 4GB in System Properties, but in reality you still have a 32-bit operating system and it still will not access more than 3.25GB of RAM.

BTW - - - An optical drive is way too slow to be installed on the same controller as a hard drive. It has a tendency to slow the faster drive down so it can keep up with the slower drive. That's a pain, because a lot of the newer motherboards only have one IDE controller. This means changing the optical drive to an open SATA header (if you have one) which means a new drive, or adding a PCI-IDE card.

 

[delussional77]

thanks swampmaster, I didn't know that about the slower IDE drive causing issues.

I did, however, realize that my 4Gb's is pretty much "wasted" on my 32bit system. I am still hoping to upgrade to 64bit someday..