Trouble resuming from hibernate in WinXP
 

My computer is intermittently failing to resume from hibernate. It's been happening for a while now (weeks) and does not appear to be related to any hardware or driver changes (I don't think there were any until I started having problems).
Essentially the computer will go through its progress bar as normal as it loads the data from disc, then the screen briefly goes black before I would expect the login screen to appear. When the problem occurs the screen just remains black. It's not completely dead - num lock/caps lock etc still work, but it's not going anywhere!
Rebooting and selecting 'Delete restoration data' boots fine (but obviously loses my state). Attempting to try again to resume gets me back to the black screen.
I've removed all unnecessary hardware, updated drivers on the bits that are left, and upgraded WinXP to SP2 since it started happening, but it's still happening on roughly 1 in 2 hibernations.

Any ideas?

Computer is Athlon 2500+, 512Mb, XP Pro
ASUS A7V8X m/b with Rocket 133S IDE card and GeForce Ti4200 video card
2xDVD drives, 3xHDs

Thanks

ideas: don't hibernate?

I've had tons of issues with hibernation, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. The theory is nice, but reality usually ruins it.

I agree 100%. Instead use power management to turn off your monitor and HD. Sucks, cause you'd expect it to work, but on some machines it's just sketchy, no matter what ya do.

hibernate has been a bastard ever since it was first introduced. It only works decently on laptops in my experience.

Doesn't work well on my IBM laptop either. Hibernates fine, only wakes up when it feels like it though.

Kind of hoping for some more positive responses - I've been using hibernate for years and find it's great; I can have my computer exactly the way I left it when it comes back on. This is only a new problem. I have to sleep only a short distance from my comp so it really needs to be turned off at night - I guess I'll keep plugging away fiddling with drivers etc.

yeah i gotta go with the others -- i had this problem with win2000 and eventually had to quit using hibernate, turning the monitor off by hand never crashes the machine.

I had a problem with that last year on my thinkpad t30. It'd start up and show the background an the mouse pointer (that could move), but that's it. I never could fix it. Eventually I just formatted.

Try disabling and re-enabling hibernation (this deletes the file windows uses, probably).

You could make your machine more quiet. Replace loud fans with silent ones, etc... that would more or less remove the problem.

OTOH, a good reboot never hurt an operating system. :)

I find it slightly depressing to look at the responses to this thread - it amazes me what sloppy design we're prepared to put up with. I'm not saying Linux is the bee's knees, but I ran a multi-user system a few years back and it didn't have or need a reboot in the entire year. And the idea of playing with hardware (and the ridiculous expense of making things silent, or the major expense of just making it a bit quieter) to correct a software fault goes against most of my intuitions.

So I've gone for the standard Windows response - a reinstall. Luckily have an HD filled with copies of everything I need to get my system back up and running again so it didn't take too long.

Why does Windows seem to have this gradual rot?

It is depressing, but the fact is Microsoft has an enormous amount of the market. We may dislike using their OS at times; it may cause you to pull your hair out and rage against the machine, but the fact is there just isn't a comparable alternative for most users.

To add insult to your injury, the Hibernate feature has always been a bane to the casual user. There are just so many things that can screw it up. ACPI compatable, video drivers, networking drivers, sound card issues and BIOS problems can all be keeping you from successfully coming back from hibernation.

Not to mention, Windows is a beast and sometimes things are modified by the user that screws up other things that don't even seem to be related.

You could systematically update and rollback drivers, remove and troubleshoot each individual piece of hardware, but it sounds like a re-install is much easier.

Good luck. :)