Computer won't wake up

When you open the lid, does pressing the On/Off button briefly wake it up from its sleep ? Normally this is how you wake up from standby. 

If you click on the large blue Q symbol on the bottom right side of the status bar you will launch the Dell Quickset Power management wizard. You can then tell the computer what to do when you close the lid (nothing or standby).

The computer will not awaken even after i press the silver power button briefly.  I can tell something is happening as the hard drive is accessed, but the screen never comes back to life.  Seems like it is working as it should, minus the fact that I can't get the screen to work.

Any other ideas.  I went to the quickset program, but it doesn't have an option on what happens when you open the lid.

Thanks

I am having the exact same problem. Dell has already sent me 2 new replacement laptops. The last one they sent I did not switch out the hard drive or any other components. Therefore it has to be either hardware or bios problems. I boot the computer and went through the initial dell prompts and then the desktop loaded. I set the screen saver to one minute and then the power management setting to turn the monitor off after 2 min on battery and three minutes when plugged in. I unplugged the battery and closed the lid, I waited 5 minutes. I opened it and touched the mouse and the screen came on. I said, “Great, it is fixed.” Then I closed the lid and wait ten minutes. I opened the lid and touched the mouse, keyboard, etc and nothing came back on. So I am back to square one, nothing has been fixed.

I called Dell support and the technician "Steve" said he had heard of this, so apparently it is a documented problem, and then told me to shut the computer down, take out the battery, and hold the power button for 60 seconds. Then I reassembled and booted up. I set the power setting to the same as I mentioned above and waited. He said that when the monitor turns off it sometime builds up a static discharge and disables the mouse and keyboard (i.e. There is nothing you can do but do a hard shutdown by holding the power button) After 5 minutes the screen came back on, Steve then said to leave it idle and he would call back in 30 minutes to see if the screen would come back on.

I never heard back....I will refrain from commenting.

I have since come to learn that there are power management standards. There is a four letter acronym that I can't remember, however apparently there are three stages to how the screen shuts off:

Stage 1: On
Stage 2: Off With Power.
Stage 3: Off With No Power.

Therefore, when the screen was coming back on it was in Stage 2 where the error is occurring is in Stage 3. I am guessing that this is a grounding issue, which is bad news. I am currently talking to some Dell higher-Ups, but no resolution has been agreed upon.

Sorry, no solutions yet, any Dell tech guys have a solution?

Message Edited by WishingItWorked on 03-14-2004 10:06 PM

Message Edited by WishingItWorked on 03-14-2004 10:07 PM

Message Edited by WishingItWorked on 03-14-2004 10:07 PM

Message Edited by WishingItWorked on 03-14-2004 10:09 PM

Thanks for the information.  I will return from Europe today and when I get back to the USA I plan to follow up on some of your suggestions and call Dell.  I suspect that I will send the laptop in since the dell tech rep also said it could be a faulty suspend switch.  I think it is a bios or software issue or conflict because sometimes the suspend function does work (when the computer is not hooked up to any other devices)  My problem is when I have the computer hooked up (via usb adsl modem).  In Europe, they are all using this ADSL internet connections via the usb port.  To get cable modem or dsl via the ethernet plug is uncommon.

Are you able to get the suspend function to work in any of the other modes???

Thanks for you detailed information.

More to follow

H

I am currently using it on a wireless lan, so the only thing that I have pluged in is the power adapter. So far I have still not had any more issues since I upgraded the Bios. Generally, when I move the mouse the screen flashs once and then comes on, it is kind of ugly, but livable.