X31 Refuses to Hibernate

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blue2 · #1 Post by **blue2** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:29 pm

I've got an X31 running XP Pro SP3 that refuses to hibernate.

Everything appears to be working just as it should...except I can't get hibernation to work. Whether by closing the lid (with power manager set to hibernate in this instance) or by using Fn F4, the machine states "Preparing to Hibernate" and then stalls. I've let it run for 30 minutes and it still doesn't move. It won't go into standby as well.

I've re-created the hibernation file, re-installed the power management driver, tried four Microsoft hotfixes for hibernation issues, but nothing seems to work.

What is odd is that when I cloned this drive image onto my T41 (they are reported to share almost identical hardware images), it worked on my T41. (But then my T41 died...unrelated to hibernation.) So is there a driver on the X31 that is preventing hibernation?

Any suggestions on what else to check or do at this point?

makai · #2 Post by **makai** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:48 pm

Seems like you did what needed to be done. Since Hibernate is a Windows thing, there shouldn't be any additional power management drivers to install. However, there are apps that will stop a computer from going to standby or hibernate if it's doing something with power management... Mobilemeter for one... but then at least when Mobilemeter is the cause, you see an error message.

You might check the Event Logs to see if there are any hints about what might be happening.

Sorry, can't offer more help.

makai

blue2 · #3 Post by **blue2** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:07 pm

Thanks for the suggestion. I forgot to mention that the event viewer log shows NOTHING at all. No error, no warning, nothing. There is also no driver or hidden device in device manager that shows anything unusual either. So this one really has me stumped.

The fact that the image when installed on my former T41 permitted hibernation is what throws me. That suggests that it can't be thrid party software related, since this did not change in applying the image to another machine.

That's what leads me think it has to be either driver related (perhaps an odd conflict) or hardware related (unlikely, I imagine). There has to be an explanation...and I had hoped someone here might come up with something that I had not thought of.

makai · #4 Post by **makai** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:32 pm

I did an SP3 update as a test on my spare X31 just to see what happens. It broke a few programs... mainly my ZoneAlarm 4.5 which I depend on, so I ended up uninstalling SP3. Since I'm guessing you also updated to SP3, I have to ask the obvious question...did your hibernate and standby work in SP2?

blue2 · #5 Post by **blue2** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 2:53 am

Good question. It did not work under SP2 either. I would have noticed if something broke after the update to SP3.

Even if it were that, it would nice to know what processes, dlls, etc. affect hibernation so as to have an idea of what to look at. The machine does get to "preparing to hibernate". So I wish I knew what processes are supposed to take over at that point. I'm not going to reinstall, particularly if there is no guarantee that this will fix the hibernation issue...

makai · #6 Post by **makai** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 4:32 am

Well, not working even with SP2 sort of points to hardware ACPI or Bios. Do you happen to have a spare disk you can experiment with? Maybe reinstalling on that would be a good test to see if the factory software will fix this.

blue2 · #7 Post by **blue2** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 8:54 am

I had not thought of that. Do you think re-flashing the bios would help? I always hate to do that unecessarily.

When you say hardware ACPI, can you be more specific. Is the interface contained within the OS? Any way to test it?

Aside from the power management driver and perhaps checking the bios, are there any other drivers that could be causing this (as before, nothing flags in event viewer or device manager, not even hidden devices, so I did not look further into this).

And yes, that's a great idea. I can swap out the hdd, insert a secondary one and see what happens when I put the preload on it. I assume it will work, but I then still won't be much closer to the cause or the solution.

denisky · #8 Post by **denisky** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 9:36 am

Have you tried reinstalling the Power Management driver? Or maybe you haven't enabled the hibernation function in Windows?

blue2 · #9 Post by **blue2** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 11:24 am

denisky wrote:Have you tried reinstalling the Power Management driver? Or maybe you haven't enabled the hibernation function in Windows?

As indicated in my first post, those were the first things I checked. I think I've covered most of the obvious things. Hibernation is clearly enbabled, which is why I get to the "Preparing to hiberate" screen. Bu it doesn't complete.

makai · #10 Post by **makai** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 6:15 pm

When you say hardware ACPI, can you be more specific.

This just means a hardware problem. I don't know how it's implemented, but guessing the software must control the hardware... so....

As far as the bios goes, I hate to update also and will only do it if I think it might help. I would try another hard drive/reinstall if you can. You also never stated if you're using IBM's install disks or a single WinXp disc. In any case, hibernate and standby should work with no problems and I've never seen it not work. Very weird!

Two more silly questions... Is your ram known good? and... Your hard drive does have a lot of room, correct? Hibernate needs both good ram, and sufficient space. Just tossing stuff out there.

If it were me, I would grab another hard drive and do an install to at least see if the same thing happens. If it does, then its not the OS.

blue2 · #11 Post by **blue2** » Sat Jul 19, 2008 9:35 pm

Thanks for your helpful suggestions.

The install was done from the original IBM recovery discs.

The ram is good because I’ve run Memtest86 a few times and let it run overnight, which is far more thorough than the RAM test done by PC Doc for DOS. The hard drive was upgraded, and is only using up 80gb out of 160, so plenty of room.

I have a suspicion that it’s driver related (even if nothing shows up in event viewer or device manager). If it were hardware related, I imagine that I’d see some other symptoms, and the hibernation issue has been around for awhile.

I just wonder if when migrating from one machine to another some power related driver was left that could cause the machine to hang in hibernation, while not causing any other symptom. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary in Add/Remove Programs, but don't know if some DLL conflict could have been left over.

If I knew how ACPI was actually implemented, I’d look into that as well a little more closely.

makai · #12 Post by **makai** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 12:49 am

Well, I'm sorry I couldn't be of much help. If you lived in California I'd give you an old 4200rpm drive just to play with. If you find out what it is that's messed up, please post back. Good luck!

makai

blue2 · #13 Post by **blue2** » Sun Jul 20, 2008 5:05 am

Thanks anyway. You had some good ideas, and no matter how thorough one is, it's always helpful to toss around ideas with someone else to make sure all bases are covered.

This reminds me of a unusual problem I had when living in Rome. Two of my Thinkpads when connected online would drop packets. Downloading speed wasn't affected since my ISP was fast (fibre optic) and the dropped packets were hardly noticeable. But if pinged somewhere, I could see that one out of every ten packets would drop cyclically. However, a third Thinkpad was not affected. Now that was really strange.

This testing got their network engineer curious, since it made hardware unlikely (two faulty netwok adaptors at the same moment?). A technician came out and could not replicate the problem on his machine. Then I started looking at what was different between the functioning and non-functioning machines, and sure enough it was an incompatability between the home access gateway software and the XP service pack. And I heard the technician say to his network engineer, "Remember that guy from Cisco that was complaining. Now I think I know what his problem was..."

It's hopeful on a forum such as this, that you get enough machines and heads together to figure out these mysteries.

Sasseli_ · #14 Post by **Sasseli_** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 6:38 am

Hi!

I have this same problem every time I re-install my computer (X31). I just re-installed my system and I´m facing this hibernate problem again. I never remember how I get hibernate to work, but I am sure that when I found that out again, you are first to know.

Sasseli_ · #15 Post by **Sasseli_** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 11:36 am

I got it working again. I posted a topic long time ago regarding the issue.

I got it working by doing two things:

1) I removed Kerio firewall.

2)I installed XP patch, which I found. One can find it from this thread.

And voila, suspend and hibernate are working like a charm.

I hope this is helping you too.

X31 Refuses to Hibernate

X31 Refuses to Hibernate

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