systrm won't wake from standby...

I'm not at my pc right now but can access my email. I put together my own pc last year. I can provide more details about it later. I'm trying to find out how to at least get my pc to boot up. PROBLEM: It would not wake from standby, red (busy light) was on steadily, I powered it down, turned off all power at the surge protector, then tried to restart. Power is getting to the mother board & hard drive (power supply is new) I can hear it attempt to start up but it stops after about 5-10 seconds... monitor works but is blank because I think the bios/chipset is not initiating windows to start loading.
I don't know how to analyze from this point! Please help.
What I can rember...
Kobian motherboard, 1.33Mhg AMD processor, 40gig HD-Western Digital,
WinXP Pro, bios: Phoenix ???
I hope this is enough info. for now.
JCsanman

 

what kind of relevant changes have you done to the system/BIOS settings?
Can you boot in 'Safe Mode'?

If possible besides your system specs, list every step/incident (screens you see, smoke you smell, sounds you hear, etc.) that occurs from the moment you press the power button and on....

 

No bios changes. The boot up does not get far enough to display anything on my screen. Safe mode is not even an option at this point... no screens, no smoke, just hear the hard drive start but only lasts 5-10 seconds. The mother board splash screen does not even display. Last download was Adobe Acrobat reader 6.0 (free version) and I installed drivers/ software for a Canon digital camera. System started ok after reboot to finish installation of Canon CD's. It was the following day Adobe was downloaded. That was yesterday,.. system has not been restarted since Adobe download. Today system would not come out of standby. ???

 

Well....thanks for the info but I have never heard of any installed reputable software causing a system to not even get to the BIOS/POST screen after rebooting...standby/hybernation features could be problematic if the system doesn't 100% support it or there are some faulty configurations in the Power related settings mainly in BIOS or within Windows even. APMI is also another troublemaker having it enabled causes problems on systems while not having it enabled on others...
But your problem is you turn the PC on, PSU fan starts spinning instantly along with CPU fan and the LED lights on the front panel of the case lights up, keyboard lights blink....you see the Video card's BIOS on the screen, a big "hell no!"?.....eeeck can't even get that far?
If all devices power up but then everything powers down, I am going to assume you have:
~ a troubled BIOS ( even possibly due to nasty configuration or incomplete/incorrect BIOS update)
~ failing BIOS battery
~ bad PSU

... these are my guesses...
Any beeps at all when you turn the PC on?
Keep us posted...someone else may come up with different possibilities as well but this is all I got for now.

 

JCsanman,

Try booting from your xp CD and doing a repair:

1. Boot from your XP installation CD.
2. At the welcome screen, choose enter.
3. Once at the license agreement, press F8.
4. At the next screen, choose to repair the selected Windows XP installation by pressing R.
5. The files will begin to install and then your PC will reboot. During the reboot you will be presented with option of booting from the CD again by pressing any key. Don't press anything. Allow it to finish the install without booting from the CD again.

Let us know.

Steve

 

Re: system won't wake from standby...

PROBLEM SOLVED !!!
IT WAS THE CPU FAN !!!
I couldn't come out of standby because the system was overheated. When I shut it down, it was either protecting itself by not restarting or simply not responding due to the heat. I'm not technical enough to explain in detail, but I'm sure you can offer a better explanation for other viewers. After a few hours, the system cooled down & I was able to start-up like the problem never existed. But, during the boot-up, I heard a mild groan/vibration and immediately looked inside and saw the CPU fan rotating very slowly! I gave it a tap & it sped up for a while. I went on-line to update the post & within 5-10 minutes, the CPU heated up again, I got a "blue screen of death", looked at the fan (again rotating slowly) and the system shut down again.
I purchased a new fan immediately, installed it & all is back to normal !!! WHEW !

WinXP repaired the system files on boot-up. Once at the desktop, a window poped up notifying that the system recovered from a serious system error.

Now, I would like to express my gratitude for the quick reply from you guys to offer the asistance you gave. You guys are "great" to even attempt to troubleshoot with such little information given by me... THANK YOU SO MUCH !!!

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST FORUMS ON THE WEB!...
THANKS FOR BEING HERE... I'LL BE BACK

 

JCsanman,

Glad you got it running again. Turcoloco was certainly on the right track, that gave you some important signs and trouble-shooting advice to look for possible hardware problems and issues.

Well done Turcoloco.

Steve

 

I am brand new to posting to forums so pls bear with me if I ding things up a bit.

I have the opposite problem: I cannot get my machine, through Power Settings, to automatically go into StandBy after the specified time period. I have followed the step-by-step presented in the XP-P "Help" section numerous times. I have tried various time combinations for the ScreenSaver on, and Monitor, Hard Drive, Standby, and Hibernation off. It just hangs after the Monitor shuts down, remaing static until I move the mouse or hit a key...then the screen re-appears.

[I can manually get it to StandBy going through the Start Button or pusing the Sleep button on my keyboard.]

I have an HP Pav xt853, upgraded to 512 RAM and a WD 200 gb HD.

Thanks for any help (and forebearance), FF2

 

Have you tried control panel>power options>power schemes?

 

I believe I did..will take another look...thanks. Will take some time before I know what happens.

 

Went that route again...short time frames...still hung after Monitor shut down.

I can live with the "problem" but do miss it working properly...Could my SpySweeper or ZoneAlarm keep Standby from operating? In any case, thanks again.

 

Try disabling screensavers.

 

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_standby.htm#xp_mouse

 

New here and I've looked through a lot of posts but I can't find info for this problem. IBM Thinkpad put into standby mode and will not wake up. Power ok, no noises, nothing - just a blank screen and nothing happening. Ideas?