ASUS laptop possibly in hibernate.. can't access

Hi all,

I have an ASUS laptop that is showing signs of being in hibernation. This laptop isn't normally put into hibernate though, because the instructions I was working from when I installed that facility failed to mention that I needed a separate partition for the temporary files to be stored during hibernation and I'd set the computer up without one. (Although it does have 2 partitions but one for OS and one for data.)

Anyway, the symptoms are that to all intents and purposes, the laptop is switched off; neither the keyboard nor the mouse get it to respond and caps lock and the other locks aren't toggling their lights. However, the CD drive spins a CD if you put it in but won't do anything else with it and then stops spinning but the floppy drive shows no signs of life which I realise is normal anyway. Also, the power switch doesn't power it on when pushed. On mine, if the laptop is turned off, sliding the power switch across turns it on, sliding the power switch across when it's already on does nothing; however, sliding it over and keeping it there will cause the laptop to power off.

The only thing that I can think of that has caused this is that perhaps a keyboard shortcut was activated to make it hibernate when a child's water bottle slipped out of a bag from about 6 inches above the laptop. I'm hoping that it isn't anything any more serious!

If at all possible, I'd like to get it back up and running without powering down because I had a database that I was partway through creating when this occurred and I'm not sure if I had saved it or not. It's one that I've been mulling around for ages the best way to go about it and I had a brainstorm on it and started knocking it up quickly, but I'm not sure if I could recreate it.

The laptop is an ASUS L7200 which is roughly a Pentium 1 or 2 with about a 300 Mhz processor and about 90mg RAM running 98SE.

Hope someone may be able to suggest something to get me back in.

Thanks.

 

Any ideas people? I'm keen to get back in without losing my data - just sittin' here waitin' for the geek with th' answer!

 

I registered to answer this question....so yeah.

If it isn't something disturbingly simple, such a 'lock' switch being on...:

I'm almost entirely sure it's a motherboard problem, and if it is, you need to get a new motherboard, which is usually around $200, take the laptop apart CAREFULLY, and replace it. OR send it to someone to do it.

In other words.....you're screwed.
xD

Hope you fix it...

-Vlad*

 

Take the main power battery (not the motherboard one) COMPLETELY OUT, without the mains adapter connected.

Wait 5 minutes

Put the battery back and have another go.

Studio T

 

Maybe I haven't been clear enough. The laptop was turned on. An important file may not have been saved. The laptop now looks like it's in hibernation. I want to get it out of its' hibernation type behaviour without having to reboot, which I am sure will be possible. I don't know any keyboard shortcuts to put it into hibernation but it looks like that might be what happened due to the water bottle landing on the keyboard. (The pocket on my son's schoolbag ripped while he was near the laptop.)

If anyone has any bright ideas to try and get it available again so I can make sure my file is saved before shutting down, I'd appreciate it.

The information in my initial post explains how the laptop normally behaves as well as what it's doing at the moment.

Thanks for those responses but I don't think they're the answer.

 

Have you tried pressing the reset button? With laptops, they hide them inside a tiny opening that only a pin can access. This is the hardware reset button and it might allow the machine to restart. As far as database preservation, is concerned, many that I'm familiar with are concurrent with your last "enter" key. In other words, they don't necessarily require an explicit "save" because they've already done an up-to-date save when you made your last entry.

 

My reset button will definitely restart the computer, unfortunately. I really want to avoid a restart if I can because during my flash of inspiration, I started setting up two, possibly three tables and don't recall if I got them saved at all. If it had only been data, I would have happily restarted, knowing my data was safe, I tried setting the tables out again just on paper yesterday and wasn't too certain what my sudden insight had been and this is one I've been mulling over for some time.

 

My sympathies go out to you chookers. All that work might be lost. If you've already tried the ASUS "wake-up" key combo and that didn't work, perhaps <ctrl><alt><enter> or <ctrl><alt><space> or <alt><tab>. Even tapping the "windows logo start" key, might help, if its available on your machine. To save work that can't be replaced, I'd be trying any key combo that was ever invented.

 

Having bought this laptop second hand without a manual and finding ASUS's site can be a pain, I don't know any key combinations! None of those worked - know any other key combinations to try? And do you know any key combinations that put it into hibernation? I think that's the most likely explanation for what's happened. And because of the hibernation not being set up correctly, it doesn't always come back but anything is worth trying.

I searched for and downloaded an owner manual last night but it doesn't appear to talk about hibernation at all! So any other info you have would be much appreciated.

 

Have you simply tried the power on switch and waited long enough? Return from hibernation can take a very long time if the machine was doing something complicated when it was set to hibernate.
Secondly this file you want to save, if you has an MSoffice program open it will have been keeping an automatic crash bakup every few minutes. You find these, preceded with the ~symbol. To see one of these in action open explorer and click on a word document and watch explorer.

Studio T

 

Was it an Office document? (Word, PowerPoint, Excel)
Because if it was, just reboot. It'll recover it. =) ^_^

 

Hi all,

Yes, to those asking about it being an MS Office document - I was using Access. So far as I know, Access doesn't create backups every few minutes but if someone knows it does but that a setting needs invoking, please let me know - I'll have a really good poke through the help and menus later but I don't think it does. And there weren't any relevant temp files when I rebooted.

It suddenly dawned on me that the word I might need to look up in the manual was suspend and when I had Adobe search for that, I found quite a few references. Hibernate isn't the ASUS buzz word! Looking at the references pulled up one key difference between what my laptop was doing and what it should be doing in suspend - the power light was supposed to be flashing, not steady like mine was (and which I notice I forgot to mention in my initial post as one of the things that proved it was still switched on in some fashion). So what was actually going on, I don't know but all the information about suspend wasn't any help to what was going on.

Anyway, I decided that I now had nothing to lose by trying to hold the power switch across until something happened like Studiot had suggested. I had avoided doing this because the normal response to that is that the laptop powers down. Weird result this time: I had tried pushing the power button across a few times before (but not holding) hoping that it would respond to that but nothing happened. This time, it IMMEDIATELY powered down the moment the button was slid across - can't explain that. So I was now definitely powered down with either everything lost or nothing to lose.

I restarted and looked for my database and found it existed. I opened it, knowing that the only thing that may have been saved was the name of the database and found that I had created three tables and most of each of them were saved. I think what happened was that I had saved some of the work I had done but not everything because when I looked at the tables that I had, I clearly remembered setting up a lookup on one of the fields which now didn't exist. (I usually save tables when I make any major changes or switch to another but I'd been so rushed trying to get my inspiration down before I lost sight of the answer, that I wasn't sure if I'd done that. It was one of those I've-just-woken-up-and-I-can-see-the-answer type situations so I was in a rush to catch the idea - you know! )

The other strange thing was that I had about 2 or 3 other databases open at the time and each of them should have been registering a different date and time on them to the time they had. Access databases change their date every time you open them and these had reverted to the old date before they were last opened.

All very peculiar but I'm pleased to have had most of my work there - I had forgotten a key feature of the solution I had woken up with which was saved, thank goodness!

So thanks to everyone who tried to help and I think this one is going to remain one of life's little computer mysteries as to what actually happened and why - it doesn't fit any picture I can find!

Oh and Vlad, the CD was able to be ejected and was spun up when inserted and I wouldn't expect this to be the case if the motherboard was dead - there were obviously instructions being sent back and forth. The laptop has to be powered on for the CD to be ejectable or for the CD to be spun on insertion so that clearly demonstrated activity from the laptop - just not activity that was helpful to me!

 

I'm glad you solved it! =) ^_^