help! z61p doesn't wake from suspend normally following fingerprint reader activation

Having a very strange issue with my month old z61p, running XP home edition. The issue seems to have started after I activated the finger print reader chip, which I waited to do until I made sure the rest of the system was running as it should.

Here's the issue:

Upon waking from suspend, the system prompts me for my finger print. After it recognizes my finger print, it begins to wake up, and displays my wallpaper and the trackpoint / touchpad arrow on the screen. It does not display the start menu, any icons, or any application which may ahve been running at the time it went into suspend. I can move the pointer around the screen, but clicking does nothing. I can use the physical switch on the outside of the computer to turn on and off the wireless, and doing so brings up the normal notice that it is on or off. I can also use the function key sequence to bring up the menu to turn on or off the wireless radio and blue tooth. None of the other function keys work, nothing on the keyboard does anything, and ctl. alt. del. does not work. The little LED light above the keyboard will turn on or off as it should.

The only option I have if my system wakes up like this is to hold the power button, which turns the system off. On restart, the system behaves normally, except Firefox will recognize it didn't shut down properly last time (assuming it was running at the time of suspend).

Anyone else encountered anything similar? It does NOT do this if it fully hibernates; only if it goes into suspend (either after I close the screen or the battery starts to go critical). Thanks for any tips or thoughts on troubleshooting.

 

to fix it, I believe you have to do: Ctrl-Alt-Del > Processes > File > New Task (Run...) > explorer.exe

That *should* return it to the original state. I'm not sure why this is happening, though.

 

Zeus,

Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't even bring up task manager, so there is no way to select explorer.exe. Also no way to see if there is a hanging process consuming resources or the like that might need to be killed.

On past systems I've had partial crashes or random glitches that cause Explorer to drop out that were cured by re-launching explorer.exe; I suspect that if I could get to a command prompt it would cure this too. Any way to force a command prompt if Ctrl-Alt-Del isn't responding?

 

Win+R will launch the run prompt, maybe you can type in explorer.exe wight there.

 

Turns out Win+R doesn't launch the run prompt either.

I've tried troubleshooting this further, and think it may be internet / wireless related. If I turn off the wireless card and leave it off, sometimes it will wake properly from suspend, but not always.

Is there any way to deactivate the security chip completely? I've tried going into the fingerprint reader password manager to turn it off, but it won't do so. I'd like to see how the system behaves without that feature running.

 

Control Panel > ThinkPad Configuration

There is an option there.