dell t7500 sleep mode problem

I had a similar problem with a X58 chipset Dell from the same era (about 10 years ago).  Flaky Sleep issues. Crashing when going to sleep or resuming.  Eventually got tired of it and turned off Sleep.  Then started getting random crashes (BSODs) about every other day.  Diagnostics and pulling almost everything nonessential revealed nothing.  Couldn't figure out what it was.  Finally crashes would corrupt Windows and require re-installing it.  At that point I let it collect dust and used another machine. 

Sometime later a different ten year old X58 machine's original PSU abruptly died.  Realized the machine with Sleep issues was still on the original PSU.  Since PSUs can often be the first thing that goes bad on a PC, decided it was worth a shot replacing the PSU in that machine as well.

It's only been a couple weeks since replacing the PSU, but haven't had a single crash or Sleep issue since.

@Techgee I havent tried doing a complete reinstall of windows 10. Do you think it's a possibility of it causing a problem?

@Techgee you might be right on the psu. I might actually have a problem with the psu. Last night I turned the system on from that sleep problem state and the lightbulb in my room blew at the same time I pressed the button. And yeah this computer did come out about 10 years ago but for the past 2 years I've owned it I've kept it super clean. I know someone did some stuff to the insides of the computer as well before I got it. I realized someone put the heatsink on backwards and when I got it, i could barely find any dust. But regardless your probably right about the power supply. I just thought when the psu goes bad the t7500 would tell you with the error code LEDs

@Techgee ive disconnected everything but one hard drive and the ram and the one graphics card due to the graphics card being necessary due to no on board graphics on the t7500 but i reinstalled windows on another drive and i think that a certain windows update is causing the problem. i have an older windows 10 install and i tried it on the drive and on the first update the sleep function worked properly. as i had to restart and update i would try to see if the function still worked. but i also added my Microsoft account and synced it to the new hard drive and it started doing the same thing again. i reverted the update and it continued the problem. im going to try the least amount of dimms possible now. 

things ive tried so far (for people that come to the thread with the same problem

• disconnecting all extra addons such as harddrives, usb attachments, the secondary cpu riser 
• changing the boot harddrive to a new harddrive
• diagnostics at a bios level
• changing bios settings
• restoring bios settings 
• started fresh with a windows reinstall (<-possibly the problem with windows update(not sure))
• changed power modes
• made a custom power mode
• removed the secondary cpu riser 
• changed power settings in the bios
• stressed tested the graphics card, cpus, and ram

my computer is a:

• dell precision t7500 series
• 32 gb ram
• 4 harddrives
  • 1x 2tb
  • 1x 1tb
  • 2x 500gb
• nvidia geforce gt 720
• 2x xeon 5650 cpus
• cpu riser
• stock cooling
• smart card reader

I think I found the problem. So I'll go into detail for whoever has this problem in the future. I followed a portion of what @Techgee told me to do which was going down to the minimum of ram I could put into the computer. I removed the cpu riser and all but one 4 gb ram stick. I then put in the harddrive with a fresh install of windows in and only that harddrive and it worked. I then added the riser with one 4 gb stick and it worked again. I kept adding 2 sticks at a time(due to having to put one stick on the motherboard and one in the riser) until I ran into an error code called pb7 which is as dell states "ACPI S0, hand off to BIOS control" which means "System on. BIOS not execution. This is the transition state to POST states." So I had to fix that which was me taking the coin cell battery out, unplugging the computer, holding the power button for 30 seconds (overkill but I dont care) and reinstalling the cpu riser and putting the computer on its side (I read in a forum that putting a dell on its side and installing the parts can some how fix that error code. I repeated these steps till it started working again. I then added 2 more sticks till it gave me a ram failure in the boot up sequence. I swapped out the 2 last sticks I put in which were dimm 3 on both riser and motherboard. (If I really wanted to know which failed I'd have to take every thing off again and put one or the other in till it failed at memory. But I dont have extra ram lying around atm for this computer, so I cant put only one back due to the memory configuration. So if your having problems try the ram at some point and dont be an idiot like me and spend so much time on everything else on the computer. I dont know why it didnt tell me a stick of ram was failing because it should have told me like it did 5 minutes before I wrote this while on a previous startup. I dont know if what I did while trying to fix the error code fixed the problem I was originally having but i do know that the sleep mode is working properly and I'm not running into the problem stated in my thread. I did this detailed piece instead of what I think fixed it because I'd rather put the whole situation in case something in that caused it to work as intended.

I just wish I had this thread while trying to figure out the problem from software to hardware back to software and finding out it was a hardware problem the computer didnt detect throught the many diagnostic tests I've done In full with the computer telling me it's perfectly fine. I spent days trying to figure this out. I tried calling Dell's tech support but they wont help unless you have a warranty and I tried calling Microsoft for tech support with software problems just in case it was that but they wont help unless you pay them to help. Anyways good luck to anyone that runs into this problem.

You might try a later version of Windows 10 if you haven't already, like 1909 or later.

The forum keeps taking my answer as spam. Long story short it was ram that caused it. Sorry to whoever has this problem in the future I cant post a detailed situation on how I came to this conclusion and what things led up to me finding out

@Nick4748,

Your detailed posts did show up.  Another long-time user I'm familiar with had the same problem - answer marked as spam.

@bradthetechnut yes I got in touch with one of the moderators about this problem and he was able to bring them back. I'm glad that it was able to be resolved after talking to him