Thinkpad randomly goes into sleep mode

Hi everyone,
My sister has a R500, vista x64 business laptop. The machine randomly falls asleep, absolutely out of the blue! and when it does, we can wake it up, but within a few seconds of it being awake, it goes back to sleep again. this happens for up to 4 or 5 times before it will actually stay awake.

Ive been through all the advanced power settings, nothing should be putting it to sleep, it is plugged in, (and fully battery). After she received the machine, I formatted it; I put the power manager drivers back on, but not the actual lenovo utility (as suggested by stalin's thread)

Any help is greatly appreciated,
Thank you.

 

Notebooks are not like desktops - you cannot just format the drive and load Windows and a few other drivers without expecting problems. I'm surprised the sleep problem is the only one you're having.

Notebooks are designed to work with all the drivers and utilities that are loaded onto them, and without them they have problems. Unlike desktops, which are more flexible in OS changes and hardware changes, notebooks are more dependent on design configuration and overall driver/utility support. In other words, they are not as forgiving as desktops and require everything Windows and Lenovo (or whatever manufacturer) to run properly.

 

and it has all the required/proper windows/lenovo drivers

 

Did you update the respective power manager software? Odd issues though...

 

Some Thinkpads feature a rather odd "hdd-power conservation feature".

This icon-if visible on the taskbar, looks like a broken hdd.

What this does is power off the 2nd or 3rd etc hdd on notebooks; in order
to maximize battery power.
However::
The feature can sometimes apply (erroneously) to the system's primary drive.
Also, it does conflict with sleep mode and hibernation; in that both of those functions require cooperation with the motherboard's power settings; which are in turn reliant on both a battery measurement; the "primary" battery measurement (the small battery placed on the motherboard to support BIOS etc functions) as well as the AC-in jack.

If any of those parts are malfunctioning, you could re-install the O.S. a million times and still have the same problem.
Bad news: Most service facilities won't even recognize the problem=
They'll either replace the motherboard for you (while under warranty)
or not replace it and attempt a partial repair (replacing of a single part).

More bad news: If the machine is not under warranty; the price of replacing the parts is often prohibiting (meaning that you'd be better off buying a new machine) and or even if you could in fact identify the culprit yourself (if you were say a technician) you'd have a very hard time convincing the service dpt that you know more about this than they do...

Good news: If you can send it in for service; they'll most likely know about this and fix it-free of charge.