Sleep/Hibernate with T400

Sorry to start yet another thread, but this one is about a different topic so it shouldnt be a problem.

Anyway, my question here is what to do with sleep/standby and hibernate. What differentiates the different modes, but more importantly, how the **** do i get them to work like should.

With XP I could put my computer to standby or hibernate, press the power button, and the computer would boot back up.

With Vista64 on this T400, I cant seem to get it to boot back up when it goes to sleep/standby or whatever. I'm not sure but i think ive read that theres a problem with some of these modes and Vista.

 

Sleep is low power and awakes in two seconds—hibernate is no power and awakes in over 15 seconds. I have a clean install and zero issues with either. Go into Power Options to configure it as you wish—or use Fn+F4/Fn+F12 to enter the states.

 

well i can enter the the states, i just cant get back out of them.

what about standby? do you know anything about that?

 

I have sleep tied to the ACPI lid—so closing the LCD enters sleep and opening it resumes. As for hibernate, the power button resumes. With regard to standby, I have no idea what that is, perhaps it’s another name for sleep—with Vista/2008 I only have sleep or hibernate.

 

well within Power Manager you will find options for sleep, hibernate, and standby.

i have it so that when i close the lid, nothing happens. when i press the power button, the computer shuts down.

but what i did after your last post was to just simply press the sleep button next to shutdown in the start menu. the computer went into some sort of sleep mode but then i tried pressing the power button to get it back on and nothing happened.

 

At this time I’m not using Lenovo’s Power Manager (why do manufacturers always have to almost completely reinvent the wheel when Microsoft has already done a **** good job) so I’m not sure what standby does—perhaps some who uses it can chime in.

Have you tried pressing a key on the keyboard to bring the machine out of sleep?

 

yeh essentially i've tried pressing any button to get it out of sleep. i dont understand why nothing works.

 

Lenovo's power manager is actually very good. It allows for a lot more flexibility and control than the built in Windows tool. However, it is substantially more complicated.

In my experience the best way to wake a Thinkpad from sleep is to hold down the 'Fn' key for about 2 seconds. The other keys don't always work, but 'Fn' always has on both my former T40 and current x200.

Vista does have a new feature called hybrid sleep that writes RAM to the hard drive in case of a power failure (like hibernate), but keeps the RAM powered so you can restore quickly (like sleep). However, I would not recommend this for a Thinkpad because it has a built in safety where it automatically hibernates if the battery gets low while it is sleeping.

Between the two modes. Sleep is much faster than hibernate both for turning off and resuming. However, it does draw a trivial amount of power (1-3 watts) to keep the RAM on. As a result it is less than ideal if you plan on leaving your Thinkpad off for a LONG time. However, if you plan on leaving it off for less than 6 hours, it is probably more efficient to use sleep, because you won't have to spin 1-4GB (equal to RAM size) off the hard drive each time you resume.

I am actually considering turning hibernate off because it is very slow on my x200 now (2GB RAM, 160 GB 5400 RPM drive) and will take even longer if/when I go to 4GB of RAM. It also creates a file on your 'C' drive equal to the size of your installed RAM. This is definitely a waste if you have a small/expensive SSD.

 

ok thanks, i'll try pressing Fn to resume and hopefully that'll work.

do you guys know what the cirle with the vertical line in the middle button does, the one in start near lock? i remember using that for sleep once and it worked, i pressed the power button to resume and all was fine. ever since i cant get things to work.

 

As someone who has 4GB of RAM and uses hibernate, I do so because loading the 4GB hibernate file is still faster than booting Windows, opening all your previously used programs, waiting for all the delayed Windows services to startup and having SuperFetch repopulate. On my system, it takes a little over 15 seconds (BIOS “POST” not included) to resume from hibernation when not on battery—and, unfortunately, about 60 seconds when on battery—but this is still preferred as my environment is fully ready to go/back where I was before when the resume is complete.

 

i tried doing the Fn thing. i got the computer to turn on from being completely dead, but the screen didnt come on. i could hear it running though.

now tried doing it by pressing the power button, did the same thing as Fn; turned on but the display didnt.

edit: i wonder if it has anything to do with my startup programs/services. i disabled a ton of them and perhaps one of them is needed for sleep to boot properly. i'll just enable normal startup right now and see if that works.

 

I am not sure what to tell you. Some people have had issues with restoring from standby in Windows Vista (although it has always been flawless for me). My best suggestion would be to turn it on with the 'FN' key. Close the lid (this should send it into sleep as well. Wait for it to get to sleep (moon on top of LCD is the only light). Open the lid (this should wake the unit) and hope for the best.

 

The troubleshooting guide actually lists the exact problem i'm having but their solution is to make sure an external monitor is not plugged in.

Perhaps its a setting with the gpu thinking a monitor is connected...

 

Open up the presentation director (FN+F7 default). And select the Thinkpad LCD only or similarly named profile. That should fix the problem of trying to display on an external monitor.

 

thanks will try that out and get back with results. dont know why that thinkpad lcd thing isnt set as default.