600X does not restart out of suspend mode

[holdenburg]

Hi everyone...

Recently, my wife's 600x will not revive out of suspend. Instead, the lights for the battery will be on and there will be no activity using the FN F4 or power switch to revive it back to life.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

H.

[whizkid]

Opening the lid or pressing Fn alone should wake it up. If they don't, it's possible the lid switch is stuck and the machine thinks the lid is closed all the time. The power switch should also wake the machine (IIRC), but you'll need an external monitor hooked up to see what it's doing.

[holdenburg]

Hi...

Thx for the reply. I tested the lid switch and it is ok. When I toggled the lid switch, it put the unit in suspend mode as this is how the power settings are set. I was able to revive it out of suspend after testing the switch initially. It seems that if the unit sits for some time in suspend mode, it will not come out of this mode and pressing the FN key and toggling the power switch will not revive it. Instead, it will need a reboot to revive it and I have to hold the power switch to get the unit to respond.

I am going to adjusting the power settings regarding the HD to see if this changes this behavior. The OS is WinXP Pro SrvPk2.

H.

[whizkid]

Just remembered... I believe the default behavior is to hibernate after some time in suspend. This can be disabled.

My wife's T42 used to wake up after a few hours of suspend, and go into hibernate. Just hit the power switch and it should resume from hibernation. Then disable that feature if it annoys you.

[pkiff]

It seems that if the unit sits for some time in suspend mode, it will not come out of this mode and pressing the FN key and toggling the power switch will not revive it. Instead, it will need a reboot to revive it and I have to hold the power switch to get the unit to respond.

I have also had this issue on one of my 600Xs under XPSP2. I am not sure what causes this, though in my case it only seems to be an issue when the unit is docked. My current workaround for the problem machine is simply to disable suspend/hibernate entirely while docked -- while still allowing screen blanking and hard disk shutoff.

Phil.

[holdenburg]

Phil...

I am not sure if the 600x in the dock displays this same symptom as the t and r series but if you look at the hardware tab under the My Computer / Properties and then check the Hardware Profiles button, you can delete docked profiles there. Once you are undocked you can then delete the docked profiles. A new profile will be created once you re-dock the laptop. Then check the unit to see if it behaves correctly. Frequently, these docked profiles get corrupted and need to be refreshed. Then experiment to see if the power profile is running correctly. It should then behave like the unit is undocked.

I still have not figured out why both our 600x are behaving this way. I am not sure but it may be due to the fact that we do not have good batteries in both laptops. Both batteries are marginal at best and last for only a few minutes. We run always with separate A/C adapters that we have in the Living Room and Bedroom

H.

[unrortit]

more like a microsoft problem than a thinkpad problem,if ye ask me!

[pkiff]

Once you are undocked you can then delete the docked profiles. A new profile will be created once you re-dock the laptop. Then check the unit to see if it behaves correctly.

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually did a full OS re-install on a new hard disk on the problem machine about 4-5 months ago, but it ended up exhibiting the same problem. My second 600X, installed using the same procedures, does not. My current theory is that it is related to some kind of software add-in that the user of my second 600X has installed (like Google Mail, iTunes, or a Firefox plugin or something?). Either that, or it has a minor hardware failure somewhere that doesn't affect anything else.

I still have not figured out why both our 600x are behaving this way. I am not sure but it may be due to the fact that we do not have good batteries in both laptops. Both batteries are marginal at best and last for only a few minutes.

That sounds possible to me in your case. In my case, I have replaced the battery and actually swapped it with the one I'm using in my 600X just to rule out the possibility of a battery problem.

more like a microsoft problem than a thinkpad problem,if ye ask me!

I still suspect it is somehow tied to a wonky docking station issue that behaves slightly unpredictably with certain software configurations, and so in that respect the fault will lie with the thinkpad more than with Microsoft. There are a number of problems with the various 600/770 series docking stations that lie with IBM's design, rather than a problem with XP. That seems somewhat expected to me, since the 600X was really a Windows 2000 machine (SP1), and the docking station was actually created before Windows 2000 was released, so the fact that the combination works as well as it does under XP is a bonus. It's a sign of how well built they were that they function smoothly under XP at all, but it is not surprising that one would find a couple problems that are hard to track down or even unsolvable.

Phil.

[holdenburg]

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually did a full OS re-install on a new hard disk on the problem machine about 4-5 months ago, but it ended up exhibiting the same problem. My second 600X, installed using the same procedures, does not. My current theory is that it is related to some kind of software add-in that the user of my second 600X has installed (like Google Mail, iTunes, or a Firefox plugin or something?). Either that, or it has a minor hardware failure somewhere that doesn't affect anything else.

I am still leaning toward a peek at the hardware profiles just to cover it. A corrupt docking profile is something that can happen on any build. I have to do this at work all the time on the T-Series 2x/3x/4x. We actually have a few of these old beasts running here and there. I have a 600 dock at home but have never used it on the 600x! The dock is packed away in our storage closet. So, with that I guess you will have to tell us if the 600x even builds a docking profile in the Hardware/Hardware Profiles location??
If it does, I would delete the docked profile and see if the behavior changes.

As far a M$ goes, there is not enough time for all of us here to speak on the woes of the M$ Monster. I struggle with them when trying to bring life back to Thinkpads that have the legitimate XP sticker only to be told by M$ that I need to contact IBM for a new sticker! Always an interesting call to M$ when trying to validate old stickers.

H.