1st win7 fail. Wake from Sleep broken... blackscreen

Well, all good things come to an end. I have had Win7 Ultimate x64 up and running for a year with literally not one issue - this is my main production system so it gets used a lot, but I police it very diligently. No crashes, no forced reboots [other than the right ones... installing things].

Then about a week ago I started having Wakeup issues. I have changed nothing on my Power plan at all. It was always set for Sleep, but not hibernate, so this is a 'wakeup from sleep' problem. It worked flawlessly for over a year, but now it fails about 1 out of 3 attempts. The time lag has always been 5 hours, so basically when I sleep, it sleeps...

The symptoms vary a bit, which is really bothersome - its inconsistent. But the two prevalent issues are:
1. No longer wakes on a keystroke. Previously, a touch of a key or touchpad would start the process. This is now dead/defunct. Does not work at all.
2. It will attempt to wake on a power[physical] button push.
3. Lots of hard drive activity per normal, but fails to re-engage the display adapter which is an Nvidia 7600GT. I've not changed drivers in a year. My Asus monitor tells me there is a signal to it, but its black-screened.

I have to power cycle the system, at which point it tries to "Restart Windows", but this will fail sporadically, then win7 debug will want to check the discs, but nothing is found.

There are no telling errors in the error logs.

Anyone have a clue??? Have there been any recent Win7 updates from MS that would affect this function?