I’m hoping this doesn’t mean my 3 year old laptop with very heavy use is getting ready to die. I have my laptop set to lock up after 3 minutes. If I’m away for just a few minutes, I can hit the any key and it will prompt me to enter my password. If I’m away for over 30 minutes, it won’t respond and the only way for me to get back on is to do a cold restart, which I hate.
Any suggestions or should I start computer shopping again?
How old is the battery? If the battery is dying (and a 3 year notebook battery is fairly long in the tooth) it might not have the ability to keep the voltage at the spec necessary for controlled hibernation. Also check you software AND your MB BIOS hardware hibernation settings to make sure they are not munged up.
I almost never use the battery. It is basically a desktop replacement and it sits on a table in the living room.
In some units the battery is not bypassed and is still use as the supplier of DC to the system even if the unit is plugged in and charging the battery. In those units a dying battery will still mung up hibernation even if the unit is plugged in.
Also DL an install the latest BIOS update.
Is this Windows? Check your screen saver settings to see what it’s trying to do after 30 minutes. I suspect it’s having problems with either suspend, or with hibernating. Change the settings so it doesn’t try to sleep or hibernate, whichever is causing the problem.