Question Must unplug PSU to reboot. Forced Hibernation.

[An Arable Hill]

Sometimes (seemingly random but often) when I sleep my PC it hangs at the end of the sleep process for a while and then shuts down. When I go to power it on the button won't work. I have to turn the PSU off until the LEDs go out and then turn it on again at the switch. When the computer comes back it's as if it slept and all my apps and windows are open.

Other times when sleeping it actually shutdowns but doesn't require the PSU malarkey.

Everything works fine otherwise. No shutdowns or overheating. No BSODs. Gaming performance under load is as expected. Windows 11 works fine.

 

[mindless1]

If after turning the PSU off, it comes back with apps and windows open, then you were instead hibernating. Look at your windows power management settings.

As far as the power button not turning it on, I'd guess that your PSU 5VSB circuit (capacitors(s) most likely is failing. Sleep can cause it to wear out faster, supplying more current without the fan running to cool it. Even so a decent PSU should handle that for a few years, how old and what model PSU is it?

 

[An Arable Hill]

It's a Corsair 1200i. It's 3 years old.

 

[An Arable Hill]

If after turning the PSU off, it comes back with apps and windows open, then you were instead hibernating. Look at your windows power management settings.

My power settings were normal and I'm definitely choosing sleep vs hibernate. I don't see any reason why it should be doing that.

Sleep can cause it to wear out faster, supplying more current without the fan running to cool it.

Would that wear cause needing to pull the plug on the PSU before it will boot after being what appears to be hibernated? (as you identified)

 

[mindless1]

^ It is a possible symptom but not conclusive.

Whether you are choosing sleep instead of hibernate or not, for there to be complete power loss from turning the PSU off (at the rear power switch on it) then the system comes back up with apps and windows open, meaning more loaded than if you had done a full fresh windows boot, then it had to have been hibernating. There is no other way to preserve the state of the OS like that without power, besides writing to HDD/SSD and reloading it because main system memory is volatile, must have power including sleep mode.

 

[An Arable Hill]

The only thing between my asking correctly for sleep and the PSU power issues is the motherboard. Could it incorrectly give me the wrong sleep state if it was faulty?

 

[An Arable Hill]

I put a new PSU in it and it seems to have solved things. So, what I'm taking away from this is, a bad PSU can cause your computer to hibernate instead of sleep. That makes no sense to me, but here we are.

I appreciate the help immensely.

 

[UsandThem]

A dying/flakey power supply can cause all sort of weird issues.

 

[An Arable Hill]

An update. I sent back the 1200W for RMA and put the 750W replacement in and the issues all went away.

3 weeks later I just had the 750W need to be turned off and on again when trying to awake from sleep. It didn't force hibernation this time and I didn't need to physically unplug it, but something still isn't right.

 

[Tech Junky]

When you swapped the PSU did you do all of the cabling as well or just unplug from the 1200 and replug to the 750?

Well, the simplest of the issues would be the OS being messed up and causing the issue. However, the PSU oddity with the 1200 brings into question whether there's a cabling or MOBO or some other component causing the issue.

Based on your signature though nothing really stands out.
5800X / ASUS X570 Crosshair VIII Hero / 32GB DDR4 / EVGA 3080 FTW3 Ultra / SN850 1TB+2TB

I would consider wiping the drive and reinstall the OS and test to see if there's an issue with it before jumping to HW replacements / swaps. I run SN850's and other drives in my systems and don't have an issue with them other than they run warmer than other drives.

The RAM might be a suspect as well but, it's hard to say w/o knowing more about what you have installed.

I don't stay up to date on AMD so, CPU/MOBO are out of my realm of familiarity / nuances but, in general should work the same as Intel.

 

[Steltek]

Might be worth running a DISM restore health session on the system drive to see if that helps before doing a full OS reinstall.

 

[An Arable Hill]

Part of Corsair's RMA is that you have to return the cables too to eliminate that as a cause. They are pinned different anyway.
This is my RAM Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4-25600) C16

Someone else suggested I wipe the drive, but having to power cycle the PSU seems like hardware. AFAIK, I should be able to boot a million times into an OS error. But, the OS seems like the cheapest/easiest attempt (next to reseating the RAM).

I did find an unanswered forum post about someone with my same motherboard and the exact same issue. I'm really dreading the idea of having to RMA my motherboard, but it makes the most sense to me. What could be more inconvenient?

 

[Tech Junky]

I would start with the OS as that's what is dictating sleep/hibernation. If it's a power issue the PSU swap should have resolved that.

If it's the MOBO that's a PITA but, if you can get them to replace it for free and it solves the issue then that's the next option.

 

[An Arable Hill]

The event log says The previous system shutdown at _ was unexpected. So it was supposed to sleep, but didn't wake back up. I guess I was wondering if it was incorrectly forcing shutdown instead of hibernation (like last time - I always sleep), but I assume that answers that.

I have a partition on my 2TB that's a mirror of my personal files on my C: Reinstalling should be easy, it's just finding a window of time. smh

The input is much appreciated all.

 

[Tech Junky]

It's not forcing a shutdown. That's related to you hitting the PSU switch. It's stalling out on suspend / hibernate.

Plug in a Linux USB drive and boot from that and suspend it and see if you have the same issue. If you don't then it's Windows.

 

[WilliamM2]

You can permanently disable hibernation just to rule it out.

Run Command prompt as administrator, and type in the following and hit enter:

powercfg -h off

 

[An Arable Hill]

I know. I wondered that if the problem hadn't gone away maybe it was choosing the wrong sleep state and shutting down instead of sleeping. Since the event log says that the PC was expecting a wake up and we killed the power, it should be that way. But before it would come back as from hibernation despite being told to sleep. Just ruling out it wasn't doing the same thing related to the original problem, only swapping wrong sleep states.

edit: to clarify as I didn't see the above comment yet:
The hibernation isn't an issue with the new PSU. Just ruling out it wasn't doing it.

 

[An Arable Hill]

A little update. Still having the issue of sometimes, randomly, when I sleep it won't turn on until I power cycle the PSU. Then it will come back on and boot up. (no issues with hibernation now) I bought a new CPU PSU and it did it 3 times with that one. I received my RMA, they offered me a new Corsair HX1500i to replace my AX1200i. I took it and it's doing it too. Anymore ideas since it doesn't seem to be the PSU?

 

[igor_kavinski]

I have infrequent sleep issues with my Gigabyte Z97 mobo. I'm usually waking it up by pressing a key on the keyboard. Sometimes, that won't work. Then I press the power button, it comes on and Windows seems to load but it loads up my applications the way I left them before putting it to sleep, meaning it went to hibernate sometime after I put it to sleep. I'm using Windows 10 so I think it's a Windows issue rather than a hardware issue.

I don't have the PSU power cycle issue that you describe. That actually sounds more serious as it means your PSU is latching off (some built in protection is being triggered). I've read online that this can be caused by Ampere GPUs and that's what you have so maybe the GPU is doing something bad (like a sudden power spike) during sleep which causes the PSU to trip and latch off in an attempt to protect itself and your PC. If you can, put in a different GPU (some older, less powerful one would be better) and see if the sleep issues still happen.

 

[An Arable Hill]

That's interesting. This is my power strip. I was plugging my small heater into it for a while and then found out that was a mistake. Perhaps I should replace it. Easier than RMAing my MB, which is what I feel like is next.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I was plugging my small heater into it for a while and then found out that was a mistake.

Yeah, that would pull some serious current.

 

[An Arable Hill]

The only thing is they weren't running at the same time, but maybe it damaged the surge protector. I don't know, grasping at straws here.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Maybe