Screen off, X61 tablet stops responding!

[noetus]

I have an X61 tablet with a brand new fresh install of Vista. All Lenovo drivers are installed, but nothing else yet.

Now, if I leave the machine unattended for a while, when I come back the screen is dark. It looks like it has gone into standby, except that it hasn't really - these three green lights are on: the 'charge' indicator, the 'battery' indicator, and the 'plugged in' indicator (all showing steady green).

That means the thing is on, but the screen remains dark. I can push any combination of keys I want, unplug and plug in the power cable, unplug and plug in the ethernet connection, unplug and plug in the USB transmitter (for the Kensington mouse - there are no other USB devices), press CTRL-ALT-DELETE, close and reopen the lid, push any of the special thinkpad buttons by the screen, including the power button - NOTHING.

Well, sometimes I see a little flurry of hard disk activity (so the thing is definitely ON and not stuck in standby) but nothing else happens - the screen remains completely dark.

Eventually I press and hold the power button to force a restart.

One thing that might be relevant is that I installed all the device managers and Lenovo software manually (as I do not trust the System Updater), including the registry fixes for various things.

Anything I can do?

[sglaser]

I have a similar problem with my Z61p. Putting it into standby and then taking it back out sometimes cures the problem.

[feamster]

I know that if it detects an external monitor and the lid is closed it sometimes doesn't startup the tablet screen for me.

[slogged]

I had the same problem whenever the laptop would go to sleep/standby with a USB device plugged in. It would become unresponsive if while in standby the USB device was unpluggd before resuming. Even with the USB device still plugged in and having the laptop resume normally, it would still sometimes freeze up.

This no longer happens for me, one of Window's or Lenovo's updates fixed the problem. Run a system update.

[noetus]

At least part of the culprit seems to have been McAfee AntiVirus Enterprise 8.5i. The problem got worse and started to afflict every shut-down, whether or not USB drives were plugged in. After a process of elimination I discovered an option in the "Access Connection" feature of McAfee. Unticking "Prevent McAfee services from being stopped" solved the problem.