New Dell i7: studio xps: certain USB devices cause lockup on sleep and a hard drive (RAID) rebuild

This is about the new Dell studio xps i7 desktop (vista x64 sp1, intel 920, 435MT, with ATI Radeon 4850 512 MB):          When the pc has gone to sleep for an hour or two (and it doesn't matter whether sleep is set to S1 or S3 in the BIOS), the video output will go dead -- the attached monitor does not get a video signal from the pc -- though the rest of the PC stays on.  (I can tell because I can remote control into the desktop via the network, and I can see that the local keyboard and mouse work by seeing the screen output via remote desktop.)         I am using the latest BIOS 1.02.  So far, there is no resolution.   Thanks.

LopezM,

Did you resolve this?  I'm receiving my system shortly and I'm a big advocate of puttin gthe system into sleep.  Have an old XPS Gen 4 that does this without issue...I hope the Studio does the same.

I have the same configuration and have not seen this issue.  I do notice that the system doesn't really want to stay asleep, even if I completely leave it alone... tends to pop out of S3 mode on its own.  However, no issues with the graphics card waking up.

J.

Note: I revised my original post. 

I can also verify that it sometimes pops up out of S3 sleep on its own, for no apparent reason.

note: I posted a separate thread on the wake from sleep issue (search for the i7 tag)--it seems to be a bug with the remote wake option in the BIOS.

Yup, and thanks to that thread was able to fix the problem by turning off the "Wake on Directed Packet" setting under Power Management for the Network adapter (within Device Manager).  That definitely enables the system to remain asleep.

Thanks much... would probably never have figured that one out on my own.

I just experienced this failure to awake problem on my new i7 desktop with vista x64, intel 940, ATI Radeon 4850 512 MB. I AM using an IOGear USB KVM switch and Logitech keyboard and mouse. I'm also runing the 1.02 bios.

Did you try changing the network adapter settings (there's a thread on that, under my name)? 

The other things you might want to try (one by one, and stopping once the issue is resolved):
1.  first connect the keyboard and mouse directly to your computer and install the drivers and software for keyboard and mouse.  Then reconnect the keyboard and mouse to the KVM switch (and your computer to the KVM) and reboot your computer.
2.  Change the power options in control panel.
3.  Intel has newer network adapter software.  This may or may not do any good, and presumably Dell will soon release an updated version.  Ditto for video card software from AMD/ATI.
4.  Finally there is a BIOS option to use a much less efficient power save, if all else fails.

Could you tell me what the BIOS option is that you mention?

Also, I have the same system mentioned and spent 2 hrs yesterday with a Dell technician trying to resolve the Sleep issue. My system kept "waking up" on it's own 3 or 4 minutes after going to sleep.  The technician changed many settings and now the system seems to stay in Sleep mode. However, I am not sure exactly what is supposed to happen to the computer once in Sleep mode. The power on light is flashing but the fan is still going. Is this normal for sleep mode?

Thanks for any help

I tried these and am still having random problems coming out of S3 Sleep.

I have additional information that might help lead to a solution. When I press a key to come out of sleep I immediately hear the fan accelerate so the computer is responding as expected. However, in some cases (maybe 1 in 5) neither of my dual displays come on. I can ping the computer from another on the network and it replys so I assume this means the XPS Studio has not locked up. There just isn't a video signal at either monitor. This also seems to rule out my KVM since the secondary monitor is connected direct to the computer's 2nd video port.

I have the ATI 4850 graphics adapter. It may or may not be related, but this adapater also occasionally doesn't remember the dual monitor settings. It may come up with both monitors set to default VGA, for example. Usually I can fix this by selecting my Catalyst profile setting twice. Just selecting it once does not return it to the profile setting.

EDIT: I rechecked my driver - the driver I downloaded is 8.522.1.1000 although on the web it says it is version 8.522.1.1008 dated 11/18/2008. I downloaded and reinstalled and it still says 8.522.1.1000 dated 8/28/2008. Unfortunately, Dell support says the ATI 4850 is "made to Dell specs" and therefore can't be updated with the much newer ATI drivers - I can only use the drivers from Dell's website. Well, this 8.522.1.1000 is dated 8/28/2008.

Did you try changing the network adapter settings (there's a thread on that, under my name)?  The other things you might want to try (one by one, and stopping once the issue is resolved): 1.  first connect the keyboard and mouse directly to your computer and install the drivers and software for keyboard and mouse.  Then reconnect the keyboard and mouse to the KVM switch (and your computer to the KVM) and reboot your computer. 2.  Change the power options in control panel. 3.  Intel has newer network adapter software.  This may or may not do any good, and presumably Dell will soon release an updated version.  Ditto for video card software from AMD/ATI. 4.  Finally there is a BIOS option to use a much less efficient power save, if all else fails.

I've solved my problem. Actually over time I experienced several problems:

• 1. XPS Studio would not resume the monitor after extend S3 suspend (maybe more than 4-6 hours).
• 2. It would not suspend on timer, would only suspend if I manually forced it.
• 3. It would sometimes wake from suspend on its own.

The culprit for all these woes was my Contour Shuttlepro USB controller. I discovered the problem by setting suspend timer to 1 minute, booting in clean mode, and one by one removing USB devices until it started doing the timed suspend. Then I set everything back to my normal mode and have been running for several days without problem.

I talked to the folks at Contour and they are working on a solution - hopefully just a new driver. It seems the device constantly sends a signal to the computer and this conflicts with the way Vista handles USB devices. At any rate, I now only plug in this device when I am editing video.

I also discovered that my Dell XPS Studio was using the generic MS monitor driver. I found and loaded the Vista 64 driver for my Dell 2408 monitor. It seemed to reduce the lock on resume, but that was before I discovered the problem with the Contour Shuttlepro, so I'm not certain how much of a role this played in correncting my problem.

Hope this will be helpful to anyone else having similar problems.

Jerry

The culprit for all these woes was my Contour Shuttlepro USB controller. I discovered the problem by setting suspend timer to 1 minute, booting in clean mode, and one by one removing USB devices until it started doing the timed suspend. Then I set everything back to my normal mode and have been running for several days without problem. I talked to the folks at Contour and they are working on a solution - hopefully just a new driver. It seems the device constantly sends a signal to the computer and this conflicts with the way Vista handles USB devices. At any rate, I now only plug in this device when I am editing video. Jerry

Thanks Jerry, I was having the problem  with my similarly configured XPS Studio. It would never go into screensaver or turn off monitor or sleep mode. Drove me batty for a while until I disconnected the Shuttlepro.

Now everything works great and I plug in the shuttlepro only when I need it. I sent an email asking for status on the problem but I received no answer. I will call them tomorrow and try to get an RMA. If that works I will get a new one once this is fixed.

The delay on the fix makes me believe that the problem is the hardware not the drivers.

Please keep us updated if you hear anything from contourdesign.

Thanks,

Bando

Hi,

I've had my new XPS One 24 (Product Red) for about two weeks and have a similar problem where the computer cannot wake from sleep mode.  I do a hard re-boot and select 'Start Windows Normally' and it starts up and everything is working again.  I have a Belkin USB 4 port hub and I wonder if that would cause any problems?  I've read in some other forums that it could also be due to a certain NVDIA monitor driver... they say to disable the nwsvc.exe file and that works too.  Also, some speak of disabling Power Optimizer in the registry?  Currently, I have all of my power management features (i.e., power down monitor and sleep mode) on 'NEVER' within Control Panel so I just have the screen saver running.  Can anyone point me in the right direction??  The computer runs great otherwise!!  Thanks!