Computer will not standby

Hi steelscribe,

Thanks for posting.  Apologies that your system is not performing as expected.

Here is information from the Dell knowledge base you may find helpful:

Power and Sleep Settings Windows 10

If the system is under warranty, please contact me privately. Be sure to include your personal information (name, address, telephone, email) and your computer's service tag number in your message. Thanks.

If there is no warranty, then you could contact our Out of Warranty team to get a quote for a paid service call -http://dell.to/1vnT6CQ

I checked my settings. They are as I wanted them, but it still won't standby. Also I think going the warranty route and losing my computer for awhile over a software problem is extreme. At this point I may have to install another OS like a Linux. The hardware itself seems perfectly fine.

Hi steelscribe,

Your notebook supports modern standby as S3 is not supported on this model.  So when the notebook enters Sleep, it enters modern standby instead of S3.  The fan symptom you described could be an expected behavior as long as the system requires to cool down.  It should stop soon.  For the music playback, if you played it locally say by Groove, it is also expected.  Hope this helps.

See more information about modern standby, search "windows modern standby" and look for Microsoft Docs.

Cheers

lifestone

Hello,

I have an Inspiron 5482 and encouter the same issue. At first I believed what  @lifestone wrote even if it sounded weird since a computer with this behavior wouldn't use modern standby but actually MODERN WASTE OF ENERGY!

So some days later I found out, that when the timer for the display standby elapses (what means there's no input for the configured amount of time for switching off the display in the energy settings of windows) the following happens:

1. The display blanks
2. Processes stopp (e.g. copying of files)
3. The fan slows down and stops after a while
4. Music that played before stops
5. When I hit a key everything resumes

What clearly happened at Dell is the following:

1. The programmers for the firmware mixed up the triggers for the energy save modes of the screen and the system!
2. When the timer for screen blanking elapses they trigger (modern) system standby to the chipset
3. When the timer for system standby elapses they trigger screen enegry save mode to teh chipset

My system still has guarantee but it doesn't make sense to me that I send it to them. Obviously this problem applies to several models if I browse through the forum so I request Dell to solve this failure for all customers.

For me personally it's annoying. I have to disable display timeout, otherwise the system stops working when only the screen should sleep. So I have to disable display standby. That means I also disable system standby, because when I set standby to something and display blanking to none this results in no standby at all.

Please provide an firmware update which changes the reaction to the standby timers to the correct behavior!

Cheers Thomas

I can't agree more, I was stunned when I was reading this?

I tried to fix this by enabling s states in the registry which made it sleep, but at wake there is a blue screen.
Linux behaves the same, there is no real sleep.
It's plain out rediculous, the HP Pavilion X360 14-dh has the exact same processor so what's the problem with implementing this?

I would really like to see a firmware update too.

Thanks

@lifestone I think you might be mixing up things. If the laptop goes to proper suspend, the fans will go off after a few seconds (as with the answer I wrote for Ubuntu Linux).
This does not happen in Windows and I think that`s even dangerous for the hardware, because it will become hotter and hotter. Since Dell supports only Windows, it´s a huge bug.

I found a way to enable deeper sleep by registry change, but on wake it just gave a blue screen.
It might be fixable, but I´ve spent enough time on it and it already works on my favorite operating system.
I suggest anyone that wants proper sleep to work to run Ubuntu Linux with below settings or make very sure the laptop is off when stored. 

Dell should fix this in BIOS, there´s a 100 options, can´t hurt to add the proper ones.

Hi Tomas (@tomshere),

I agree with you on that Dell should fix the BIOS, the current powermanagement settings are plain wrong and not changeable in BIOS (also Inspiron 5000 5482).
I found a way to make it work on (Ubuntu) Linux though.

In a bash terminal:

 $ cat /sys/power/mem_sleep 
 [s2idle] deep
 $ echo deep|sudo tee /sys/power/mem_sleep
 $ cat /sys/power/mem_sleep 
 s2idle [deep]

The first output shows that the default setting is s2idle instead of deep, which Linux seems to detect from the BIOS on this and other Dell laptop models.
The second command shows how to change it.
When a sleep action is triggered, it should go to 'true' suspend now. 

To make this happen at every boot, you need to add an option to the bootloader (until Dell fixes things properly, or somebody writes a fix - the latter may be hard because in general things that work around hardware issues are not easily accepted in the kernel).

An easy way would be to add mem_sleep_default=deep to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT entry in /etc/default/grub:

 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="mem_sleep_default=deep"

Then run update-grub as root and at next boot it's set (check with the cat command).
I had to take an additonal step to have the lid switch activate the sleep mode (check mentioned links in the end for safety), basically:

sudo gedit /etc/systemd/logind.conf

and then uncomment by removing #:

HandleSuspendKey=suspend
HandleLidSwitch=suspend
#HandleLidSwitchDocked=suspend

I did not uncomment the last because I don't want my laptop to sleep with connected screens but go to clamshell mode.

I tried this on Windows too by changing a registry setting that disables s sleep or something.
It made it sleep but at wake I always got a blue screen so I gave up on that because I basically only run Linux for real work anyway (and I can recommend it ). 

I hope that helps and a thanks to the Arch Linux wiki writer and itsfoss for handing the solutions.
Cheers !

Sources:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Dell_XPS_15_9570

https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-close-lid-suspend/

I have the same issue.

I found this solution on another forum and am trying it.

https://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/Sleep-Issues-and-Wake-Up-Issues-xps-13/td-p/5018369

They disable standby mode and use sleep mode.

Hi,

Incase people read this, please consider contacting support and being persistent in asking for an engineering fix for the BIOS if applicable. That or drivers that support S3 properly so that machine ans software handle it correctly. In the above case I described, it works properly on Linux, meaning S3 is properly handled by BIOS and the OS works. In that case the drivers for Windows are broken (and still not fixed ) so engineering should fix drivers.

In this case however: https://www.dell.com/community/Precision-Mobile-Workstations/precision-5550-S3-sleep-not-working/td-p/7759319 the fix does not work on both Windows and Linux and behaves the same : at wake a Dell logo appears and the computer hangs. In that case as far as I know, the BIOS has a bug that should be fixed. Make sure Dell is aware of this and claim support if you have it.
I personally would not have bought the 5550 precision if I would have known this and that is what I told support. I have asked them for a fix from engineering and I will take it back if they fix it. Positively surprise us this time please Dell!

Just for Dell to remember: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-15-9570-BIOS-1-3-0-sleep-mode-gone/td-p/6131926/page/2 . come on guys, make it happen and  more than Lenovo.

In the mean time, Dell replaced the motherboard, naturally without results. There have been 3 BIOS updates in the mean time that did not address the issue, even if it is not present in the Precision 7550 with sign of life options disable, which should give a very clear indication of where the problem is ( very similar hardware). They have admitted this is a BIOS ( firmware ) issue and then it will be addressed but not when. I hope I live to see it. As I wrote before, if you have an S3 problem, scream and return the product if possible. Seems like anything newer than 9/10th Gen intel has a problem or lacks S3 entirely.
So Dell, once again, please make sure that next BIOS update fixes wake from S3 sleep! thanks