Sleeping computer shuts down for some reason

Dell XPS 15 L502x
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

This happened for the second time today. I put my laptop to sleep by closing the lid. When I returned a couple of hours later, opening the lid did not wake the laptop. I pressed the power button, and it booted up, and Windows indicated that the system had not shutdown normally.

There was plenty of battery power, so that's not the reason for the failure to maintain sleep.

Windows Update should not have caused it either, as Windows Update is set to:
"Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them"

Why would my sleeping laptop shutdown or lose power?


After reboot following the crash, Administrator account showed this dialog box:

I used WhoCrashed to analyze the crash dump file. Here's what it reported:

 

I have the same laptop, and have had the same thing happen to me a couple of times. Was your GPU being used when this happened?

 

The laptop was asleep, in Sleep mode. So, I would think that no, the GPU was not in use.

 

After reboot following the crash, Administrator account showed this dialog box:


Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: BlueScreen
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 4105

Additional information about the problem:
BCCode: 9f
BCP1: 0000000000000003
BCP2: FFFFFA800777CE40
BCP3: FFFFF80000B9C3D8
BCP4: FFFFFA800F0997F0
OS Version: 6_1_7601
Service Pack: 1_0
Product: 768_1

Files that help describe the problem:
C:\Windows\Minidump\101712-21403-01.dmp
C:\Users\AB-Admin\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-30492626-0.sysdata.xml

 

Hmm...sorry if you've already done this, I did a quick search on BSOD code 9f and came up with this:

Windows 7 Blue Screen: Error 9f - Microsoft Community

They're hinting at a possible driver issue, I'm not sure how accurate that is though. Are you running the latest BIOS/drivers? How about the graphics driver? Also about the GPU in use: was there a program using the GPU before the laptop went to sleep? I'm a beginner at troubleshooting, but from my own personal experience I would target the GPU driver as the cause in that case

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I searched and found similar references to what you did.
Drivers are up to date, and no errors in Device Manager. Latest BIOS from Dell.

Prior to sleeping, the laptop was just displaying web pages and text files, so likely not using the GPU.

 

See if you can navigate to that mini dump file and open it - it may possibly have a reference to a specific driver that's causing the issue.

 

Thanks. I'll have to install a dmp viewer.

 

I used WhoCrashed to analyze the crash dump file. Here's what it reported:

 

I've had this happen to me a few times, on both my laptops and 2 others too (one Lenovo T420s, one Dell Latitude E6400).

Mine is not the definitive answer, but I've found that the state BSOD->shut downs I had were all due to the ethernet driver. In these very cases, installing the ethernet driver from the manufacturer's website (Intel/RealTek/Broadcom) fixed it.

A lot of our laptops at work are imaged, and so we use the default Windows 7 and WHQL drivers that come down through the Windows Update. There are some times when the Windows Update driver is pulled down and replaces the vendor driver such as Dell's. Though you've already configured your WU to only download and update on your approval, it's possible that you may have accidentally allowed a driver to come down WU and replace whatever driver you had from Dell or the component manufacturer.

Just my 2 cents, hoping it might help.

 

Thanks for the reply.

My ethernet drive is the Realtek Ethernet drive, downloaded from the Realtek web site.