2 Problems with Vista SP1 on my notebook: random awake and error upon wakeup

1. I close my lid and my laptop is set to sleep. well it does...but randomly turns on sometimes again and my fan starts working. this worries me alot because i sometimes am in a rush and have to close the lid and stuff my laptop in my bag and im afraid it will wake on its own and the fan will begin working inside my bag..

2. 4 times already (only 3rd day of laptop usage) I awake the laptop from hibernation and it gives me an error "windows recovered from an unexpected shutdown. Reason: Blue Screen" Well...I don't get how because it hibernated normally and awoke from hibernation as any other laptop would... I didn't see any blue screen.

any ideas? Vista Home premium SP1 fully updated.

this has happened to me on 2 vista laptops already!!! and my friend complains of similar issues.

 

The fan running in a bag is not in itself a problem (at least I don't think it is), but the computer awake and running in a bag can get hot if it runs for too long there.

Anyway... go into Device Manager and go into the Properties for your various devices. Some devices (e.g. modem) may have a Power Management tab... if so, make sure "Allow this device to wake the computer" is unchecked.

Also, tasks scheduled using Task Scheduler can optionally be configured to wake the computer. You might want to look through Task Sched. and see if any are set up this way. (Maybe not though.)

Then, you can check your BIOS... it may have settings about what can and can't wake the computer... and maybe an alarm that you can make sure is not set.

As for your other problem... are you sure it didn't reboot?... were your programs still open after it woke? Anyway some drivers don't wake from sleep right... check intel.com to see if you have the latest graphics driver... and disable any unnecessary devices in device manager. (Don't use your modem? Disable it. Smart card reader? Disable.) Even for devices you do use, you can uninstall some third-party drivers. For example, my mouse and sound work fine with Vista's built-in drivers, so I use those instead of the third-party drivers. Getting rid of third-party drivers to the extent possible helps with stability in my experience... especially with wake-from-sleep issues.

 

turns out my intel gpu driver was from may 2008, and they released a new one in early aug/late july. HOWEVER, when I try to run the .exe it says that this driver is not validated for this manufacurer (sony?) and asks me to use the driver provided by the manufacturer.

sigh...

 

There's a workaround.

Download the .zip file instead of the .exe (the Intel site has both).
Extract the .zip and follow the instructions in the readme file(s). It'll walk you through the steps to install the driver from Device Manager.