M60 hibernate problems

i'm having the same problem.  And I only have 1G of ram.  I too have to close a lot of programs to hibernate. If I suspend without checking to see if hibernate will work it tries to auto-hibernate according to my settings (15 minutes)  and on failure the computer ends up ON.  This drains the battery in the matter of an hour.

Dell please respond to this big annoyance.

Thanks!

 

 

What kind of external mouse are you folks using?

I am having a related problem with the internal keyboard on my M60. Whenever I try to go into standby or hibernate mode by either using the 'suspend' key or through power management timers I get the message:

The device driver for the 'Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard' device is preventing the machine from entering standby[hibernation]. Please close all applications and try again. If the problem persists, you may need to update the driver.

I find this to be an odd name for the internal keyboard, but anyway ... I called support and went through unistalling this device and the external keyboard and reinstalling them in several combinations with no success. I also went through disabling 'startup' and non-Microsoft 'services' from running at startup with support, which did not help either. The external keyboard is an old PS/2 ergonomic one that is connected using a USB converter. This is automatically detected by the OS. Both keyboards work well otherwise.

I have the newest driver from Windows update for the internal keyboard, and I suspect that the problem relates to Windows 2000 SP4 that I am using, but I think that it could also be related to the bios, which I know little about. I could not find any keyboard drivers for my computer on the Dell website. Any assistance would be appreciated.

I found the solution myself by digging around the internet. It was an issue with 'Adobe Type Manager 4.0'. I upgraded to a newer version, and the problem went away. More on the issue can be found at

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;257199

I've moved on to another computer now and I can't remember what the solution was. I believe it was a combination of updating the bios and possibly the Adobe true type solution mentioned above.

cheers,

Vann

Vann,

this is quite old now, but I wonder if you ever found a solution as I am having the same problem with a Latitude D505 under W2K SP4 SRU1, but not under XP SP2 (which incidentally I do not want to use for a couple of reasons, including XP's interference with the LAN consisting of W2K machines).

What I have found out is that the problem goes away if RAM is 1GB at max. With more RAM it usually happens if more than about 400MB RAM are used according to taskmanager.

Otherwise just the blank screen and resume to full operation. No error message, no external keyboard/mouse/screen. I need the 2GB for a photo editor that frequently crashes with just 1GB, but otherwise I have nearly stopped using the machine for this inconvenience.

So far I have checked size of/recreated hiberfil.sys repeatedly, re-partitioned twice, switched RAM modules in combinations from 512MB - 1 - 1.5 - 2 GB, run memtest86, resized pagefile, moved pagefile from swap to OS partition, applied latest drivers incl. Notebook System Software. Would be difficult though to get the machine using 400+MB of memory from a bare W2K setup without drivers/applications.

Would love to hear anything that might solve this problem.

Jan

Message Edited by sindbad on 12-13-200610:18 AM

Vann,

if that wasn't quick, especially for such old a thread!

Unfortunate I must go on digging for a solution though. Don't have the Adobe thing (if it is not related to Acrobat Reader), and already updated the BIOS twice. There is one more recent version, but explicitly directed at enabling Vista ... Otherwise I moved on to another machine as well, by staying loyal to the faithful Inspiron 3000 laptop!

Thanks anyway and have a great Christmas time and a healthy & prosperous Happy New Year!

Jan

Jan,
I don't remember much about this problem either, but the only Adobe product I use is Acrobat Reader. It's worth checking on the 'Adobe Type Manager 4.0' because it might be on your computer. I haven't had problems with hibernating the computer since I updated the program.

Daniel

Vann & Daniel,

though some time has passed many thanks for your replies.

I did not have Adobe Type Manager since WfW 3.11 (which was never setup on this D505 Latitude), nevertheless I checked the registry and found to files that seem to be related to ATM, but also seem to be native part of W2K. Anyway, as Acrobat Reader incidentally was one of the few apps not yet set up on the XP setup (where hibernation works no matter if RAM less than 1GB or full 2GB) I started treading on carefully, step by step adding the stuff I run under W2K, but had not yet setup in XP, each giving some time for testing for hibernation failure. None.

Then going the other way round, formatting the OS partition and re-installing W2K from scratch, with just the most necessary Dell drivers, and the Nikon Capture photo editor as the best option for using larger chunks of memory. Again, hibernation would start to fail with RAM over 1GB.

After finding out that standby/hibernation basically comes with the Intel Extreme Graphics 855GM driver I made a final attempt with just the native driver from Intel themselves added to another clean W2K install, plus Nikon Capture, but again hibernation would fail.

The BIOS update to A11, the latest for the D505, did not help either.

So either Intel or Dell have broken something in hibernation support for W2K. It shouldn't be W2K or there should be more reports on this on the web (as is the case with XP's initial 2GB bug). It looks less likely that it is the Intel driver as again the issue still should come up more frequently. That leaves the greatest likelyhood to Dell - Designed for MS Windows XP, as the sticker says. The chance that Nikon Capture has a hand in it is almost zero as hibernation also fails if a couple of other apps run, but not NC. NC was just convenient for getting a test environment quickly. The funny thing is that very rarely I would get to a point of more than 1GB memory actually used, but NC would be quite eager to crash with only 1GB RAM. The general condition for failure of hibernation is A) RAM > 1GB and B) more than 300-400MB RAM in use (according to W2K taskmanager).

So it seems I am stuck with a laptop that either does not hibernate (under W2K), or causes at least one other W2K machine on the P2P LAN to drop out and become unavailable until being rebooted (with the D505 running XP). This is bad no matter I turn it.

Thanks again && have a great weekend!

Jan Hendrik

Message Edited by sindbad on 03-24-2007 11:07 AM