Laptop freeze upon closing screen without powering down

Factual Questions
1

I’ve left a message with the relevant tech support people, but in the meantime I wonder if anyone here has any experience with a problem like this.

Typically, you’re supposed to be able to close a laptop without powering it down, then later when you open the laptop, it starts up right where you left off (though you may have to re-enter your user account password if you’ve set it up that way).

My new laptop, however, doesn’t seem to be working properly in this regard. When I open it up, it simply shows me a screen full of thin vertical lines. I think (but am not sure) that the OS is running–I can hear disc reads–but I can’t use the machine because my screen only shows vertical stripes.

So I have to then power it off manually, and then go through the “restart Windows normally?” dialogue.

A couple of times it’s gotten really screwed up and instead of going to “restart Windows normally?” it gives me a choice to go through “startup repairs” (or something to that effect).

And finally, a few hours ago, something happened during a bout with this problem which caused it to be unable to startup properly at all–it would say “windows is starting” with the windows logo, but then when it should have gone to a login screen it showed a blank screen instead.

I was able to start it in safe mode and do a system restore to a day ago, and that solved the problem with it being unable to start up. But that doesn’t solve the stripey screen problem.

The “workaround” is just to always power down before transporting the laptop anywhere.

But has anyone had experience with a problem like this, and if so, did you find a solution?

(BTW it’s set to “sleep” when the lid closes. What’s the difference between that and “hibernate”?

Also, though I mean to just ask in general whether people have seen problems like this and how they solved them, still, if you want to know, my system (three days old) is an i7 740 running Windows 7 Home Premium, with a Radeon 5850. )

2

I see: Sleep goes to a very low power consumption state, while hibernate saves the state to disc and then completely powers down.

That makes me think it’s plausible that changing the laptop lid close function from “sleep” to “hibernate” also be a way to work around the stripey screen problem.

3

IAACT

I HATE “sleep/hibernate” type functions. Plenty of programs and 3rd party software and drivers do not behave well when it is used.

and it is a nightmare to diagnose.

4

I got the blue screen of death twice by closing a laptop. It didn’t dawn on me that a certain program might be the culprit. It was a mapping program connected to a GPS that did it. I will NEVER shut down a laptop while it’s running programs again. The computer went into a slow motion loop of some kind like it was trying to calculate Pi.

5

I get this regularly. I close a laptop, come back later, open it, only to see a big “<program> has encountered a problem and needs to close” message.

6

This happened to me when I purchased my HP laptop. Tech support said it was probably a botched OS system installation and to try reinstalling it. I did it. 4 years later, never a problem again.

7

Welcome to a world of pain. You have a problem that is the intersection of a number of technologies in a modern computer. However, given that it is only 3 days old, I would be calling my supplier for a working replacement.

So, for some more detail on possible causes…

The Laptop lid switch is connected to ACPI. This is the hardware and firmware interface that signals the OS that the lid is closed and manages power consumption and sleep/hibernate/off states. As part of ACPI, the BIOS contains a DSDT (system description table) that defines the system states and operations to take. These DSDT tables are written by the manufacturer and are often poorly defined and inconsistent (you should see what the Linux developers have to do to make ACPI work for laptops in general). OS versions/vendor hardware drivers often have corrections and workarounds for incomplete BIOS DSDTs. You may have hit a problem there.

The system board is pretty important too. It has to know how to switch the CPU states and manage power consumption in these low poweruse states.

The Video Card and Driver also have to respond correctly to the powersaving state change - particularly with regards to saving the video memory and restoring it. Your corrupted display on wakeup indicates that this may not be happening correctly. Try getting an updated driver from the manufacturer.

Finally, the OS needs to support the appropriate power management. Windows 7 is actually pretty good at managing these - MS have worked really hard at power management/sleep/hibernation for Windows 7. This (in my opinion) is the least likely source of the problem.

There may be another problem, and that is heat. You have a i7 and a Radeon 5850 in a laptop case. These generate significant heat. It may be that when the lid is closed, airflow changes and residual heat builds up in the system, even with the minimal power use of sleep mode. Try putting the laptop to sleep from the start menu without closing the lid to see if it actually does sleep and wake up properly. Then try pressing the laptop lid button to see if that responds the same way. This should give you an idea of where the problems lie, but I would still expect the supplier to replace it. YMMV.

Si

8

There are lots of causes, as explained. However, I had a very similar issue on my Dell XPS after a Window 7 update, here’s how I solved it.

In the power-saving settings under control panel you can put yourself on a custom power plan, under the advanced power settings (and you might have to click a few things to reveal it) is a Hard Disk setting. Set all the entries for ‘Turn off hard disk’ to ‘never’. You might even need admin rights to do that.

I found this after some searching online and it worked like a charm for me. However I can’t say that it wasn’t something completely separate that just fixed itself.

I hope that helps.

SD