M17xR3 Unable to wake up

Title says it all. Sometimes, my R3 wakes up fine. Other times, it doesn't wake up at all. It will light up, I hear the dvd drive move, but the display stays black, and I have to hard shut off. I have flashed the original bios A08 back to it, and the problem persists. This happens in both IGP and Discrete gpu modes. Any help?

 

Very often, hitting Fn+F4 will bring the screen back to life in that situation. Not ideal, but beats a reboot.

 

This is just a long shot, but could it be the HDD? I noticed under power management that the HDD turns off after 20 minutes of inactivity. I'm probably wrong, but could that be it??

 

none of these things seem to fix it. This is becoming a serious issue. If I leave it asleep for more than 10 minutes, I have to force reboot.

 

technos, there could be so many things that are causing your issues. Here is a few things that i can think of:

-Reinstall Video card drivers
-Faulty ram...when it goes to sleep, it suspends to ram in S3. Faulty ram will make it hard to boot up again. you can try to remove some of your sticks to troubleshoot
-Bad motherboard and/or bad battery: one thing to try: unplug, remove battery, hold power button down for 5 seconds to drain charge out of motherboard components and then see if it starts up normal

Also...there are various sleep modes S1 to S4. I know many people have issues in S3 sleep mode (suspend to ram) but S1 will work np. Go into your bios and see if you have options to change your sleep mode. My bios is the unlocked A08, so i'm sure i have those options, but i don't know what you have

 

There's a fix on the dell forums for Nvidia GPU's.

If you running 100-120hz, change to 60hz before putting to sleep or hibernation.

Im at work so i cant find the link

 

Same problem here.

So bumping thread.

 

Yeah the problem seems to be windows not being able to wake from refresh rates higher than 60Hz. If you want sleep, set your monitor to 60Hz.

 

but what if you're at 60hz like the OP?

 

Ok will try that and let you know if it works in the morning!! This is my n^th question you have answered. Definitely a ++rep for you. Seems like you and SlickDude and the current troubleshooters for people from all around the world.

 

Oops fatal forum mistake not reading the OP. My mistake I dunno. I can't wake from sleep but I don't sleep much.

 

I've tried a factory restore, fresh OS install, flashed my original bios back and my original VBIOS, and i STILL can't wake up from sleep. This is becoming a serious issue for me, as I'm always on the go and having to restart the computer everytime i close the lid is annoying.

 

Did you play with your sleep mode type? you can do S1 to S4. Many people have problems with S3 because it saves to ram, but S1 should work np. At least give it a try

 

is this a windows setting or a bios setting?

 

ya its in your bios.

Just a few things:

(I have to use generic terminology because i dont' have my alienware infront of me.)

If you're on Raid mode for HDD: Find where the sleep mode is specified...change it to S1
if you're on ACPI for HDD: set S1 for ACPI Standby State

 

I can't seem to find this setting.......all i have is disable S3 state, and that hasn't fixed it.

 

Not awaking from sleep happend to two of our m17x's after we updated the gpu with a NON DELL driver. Rolled back to the OLD Dell driver and awoke like Cinderella...or is that Snow White?

 

Now if dell would actually update their drivers.

 

Yeah really Dell when will you update the driver? Last i checked, the driver date was JUNE. Latest is 25 oct. And its such a pain to update the latest drivers. Dell, get on this ASAP!

 

M17xr3 still having sleep issues, I am at my wits end. Re installed windows over and over and made sure my drivers are up to date. I still get sleep resume failures and hibernation resume failures. Please help!

 

So I am having this same problem but with the R4. I looked in the bios as slick suggested and I couldn't find anything to change with sleep settings.

I am running a raid SSD setup.

Using the "suspend" function ( Fn + F1 ) I have no problems.

If I close the lid, the lights stay on, ( although the alienhead on the back goes off ) the screen is blank, however the battery drains. Not sure what is happening but its really annoying as I do like to close the lid when in a pinch and be able to use the computer without rebooting.

Could this be the driver? I am using the driver on the recovery disc after doing a clean install of windows 7.

 

7 ultimate
os on ssd
tried latest and oldest gpu drivers (560m)

waking from hibernation/sleep i just get a black screen too.

I'm going to try removing the RAM + HDD's i put in and going back to stock hardware to see if the problem persists.