M17-R1 (Pre-Dell) will not properly wake from sleep.. black screen, no keyboard lights.

I have a M17-R1 (Pre-Dell) that will not properly wake from sleep.. it goes to sleep just fine, but when I wake it up (by pressing the power button), I hear the fans start up, and the wifi/touchpad indicators light up at the top (above the keyboard), but the system just hangs at a black screen. The keyboard illumination never comes on and the only way to get back into Windows is by doing a hard reset (holding down the power button). Also, the computer hibernates without any issue. I am running Windows Vista 64bit and everything is fully updated. I am running the newest legacy video drivers (issue was happening before with the stock drivers as well). I am running bios version W841.B14 .. I have completely disabled Aliensense as well as bluetooth and the ATI external events monitor. I have yet been able to resolve this issue and it's killing me.. has anyone else dealt with this? Any help would be VERY appreciated, thanks everyone.

OS: Windows Vista Home Premium SP2
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz
RAM: 3gbs of DDR3
Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870

 

I assume the 3870 came with your system and wasn't an upgrade? Most sleep issues I've encountered have been graphics card related.

 

Correct... it wasn't an upgrade. I mean, I guess I can uninstall the drivers and roll it back to it's original driver? Although it wasn't working before. I just spoke with my buddy who was the original owner, and he said he doesn't remember ever even trying the 'sleep' function. Also, the bios is the version that it was shipped with.

 

I used the Guru3D ddu to fully remove all bits and pieces of the current driver install and re-installed the ORIGINAL stock video drivers.. still experiencing the same issue. Going to test the ram now.

 

Yeah do the usual, memtest, video drivers, look in the bios for any sleep options... Way back there was a Windows 7 issue where some computers would not sleep. Vista uses pretty much the same Kernel as 7 but this was patches years ago with a windows update. Did you run all windows updates?

 

Running memtest now.. also, I looked through the bios, but there are virtually zero sleep options. Super basic bios, not a lot to work with. And yes, I did run all of the Windows updates. But yeah, I mean, the computer goes into sleep mode NO problem, but then when I hit the power button to bring it back up, the fans kick on and a few lights start up, but then it just hangs. No monitor, no keyboard, no touchpad, etc. I can press any button I want at that point and nothing happens. I just have to hold down the power button to do a hard reset. BTW, I am unable to wake the computer from sleep with anything other than the power button.

 

Memtest passed. Also did a check disk which found a few bad clusters, but nothing I would consider major. No bad sectors. At this point, I'm not really sure what else I can do. I have seen on a few different forums people complaining of older Alienware sleep related issues or just laptop sleep related issues in general, usually based upon Windows Vista machines. Inconclusive results/answers for most of them.. there's gotta be a way to resolve this.

 

Tried a live boot DVD of Linux such as Linux Mint? Could see if it properly sleeps with that. You said at one time it did sleep properly?

 

Welp, got some good news! I ordered/installed some new Corsair ram this past weekend, which didn't work.. searched through the forums, found that people had issues with the same brand of ram, so I'll be shipping that back today. Ordered some Crucial brand memory instead.. while anyway, after it was all said and done, my laptop decided to SLEEP. I double-checked the settings on the power plan and reverted any changes I had made in case just to confirm. What's more annoying is that I had reseated the ram previously, so I had 'pretty much' ruled that out. Guess they just needed to be reseated a few times? LOL, ridiculous. That being said, I am overjoyed. Thanks for your help! WOOHOOOO