Laptop troubleshooting forum: Help! My laptop goes to sleep and won't wake up, unless it feels like it.

Also do check your power settings. Make them all as never sleep or turn off monitor. As you already had done this so just check your RAM and display driver as well.

My recent problem was with a desktop running Windows 7. It wasn't going to "sleep" but it did stop responding sporadically and it would stay that way for an extended time. Extensive checking showed no virii, rootkits or other inimical beasties. Task Manager showed no network activity, no significant CPU activity, no excessive read/writes, and memory usage looked normal. I later used Spinrite 6 to show there were no errors on the hard drive. Drove me nuts! I finally tracked the problem down to some kind of corruption in my Outlook .pst file. I created a new one, transferred my contacts and calendar and a few critical emails and the system is working just fine now. Oh yeah. To make diagnosis more "fun" If I told Outlook to shut down, it appeared to do so but Task Manager showed it was still running! I didn't catch that at first and thought I'd eliminated Outlook as a culprit. Don't know if this fits your symptoms but maybe it will help someone. Good luck!

I have this laptop and it, too, is out of warranty. However, you can still download updates to the BIOS, etc, from the Dell support page for this laptop. You can't change the power management scheme in the BIOS for this laptop--you need to do this in Windows from the Control Panel. Usually, the light in front of this laptop flashes when it enters the hibernate mode; and holding down the power button for a second or 2 will awaken it, without shutting it down. Otherwise, you can change the power management scheme in Windows to a "custom setting"--rather than the typical Dell settings--and set the hard drive to "never" sleep.
Or, as another poster suggested, this could be a heat issue--I experienced such when adding a faster hard drive to this laptop. I added a laptop cooler to sit underneath; and made sure none of the vents were clogged by taking the screws off the hard drive enclosure to remove the hard drive; and took the screws off the back area where the CPU,memory, etc are seated; and blew canned air into the areas to remove all dust.
Hope this helps.

Don't forget that hibernation need disk space equal to the size of RAM. I partition a separate drive off for the swap file and hibernation. Then you need to set the pointers to the files. If I have 4GB ram I will make a 16GB partition so I have some extra space. This will assure both have contiguous space which is more stable and faster than fragmented space.

And on the same OS. Turned out to be the hibernation files corrupting. No virus involved.
I did this , never happened again. Apparently you can't turn off hibernate completely through the Vista/Win7 interface. If it corrupts too much, windows simply will not boot.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/itdojo/delete-hiberfilsys-by-disabling-windows-hibernate-function/1493

Going to throw a wrench into some of your solutions as I don't think that there is a hardware issue on the Dell laptop as my HP dv9000 laptop (also has Vista) started doing the same thing about the same time, right after the last Microsift update was installed, have not had time to try to track it down but I now believe that it has something to do with one of the last group of updates that were put out. I have heard from several other that have Vista with the same problem and it started after the last update. The problem has shown up on a HP, Dell, Asus, IBM and a Sony, now all I need is time to figure out whith update did this

You said that there is a flaw that is well known in the tech circles, would you like to inlighten those of us that have not been given this bit of wisdom, as this hardware issue

Restored the computer to before Nov 29th and all the problems with going to sleep and not wakeing up, error messages from IE have gone away, now comes the fun part of reloading each of the updates, one at a time to see which is the one that caused the issue in the first place.

diffrent friends has already given ther suggessions that all are possiblity. But one thing is mind on that u check your laptops cmos baittery & replace this is the right solution i.t. related to hardware minor problems.
enjoy & forget sleepmode now

I had a similar problem with a Toshiba Satellite A210. I found that it was running way too hot. I vacuumed out the fan vents and got it working again. I did not disassemble anything just ran the vac over the vents. Might not be the answer but an easy try.

As somone who uses the sleep function on my laptops much more often than shuttng them down, and as someone who has used numerous models of DELL laptops prior to 2011, I can tell you that I've encountered this problem with almost all of them and updating the BIOS was ALWAYS the solution for me. You can play around with Windows settings to prevent going into standby of course, but if you use standby and want it to come OUT of standby more often than not, you need to check for and install the BIOS update. That's what DELL advised me to do years ago and I've done this on every one I've had the problem with. It brought my rate of coming out of standby from around 60% to almost 100% of the time.

I have a 2008 Asus that came with Vista and had three same problem. It took a BIOS update to fix mine.
I eventually upgraded to W7, bt the BIOS update fixed the hibernation issue with Vista. Go to the Dell website and update your BIOS to the latest version, and maybe that will help. Good luck.

I have several laptops around the house, of various ages. To be honest problems like that do not happen anymore since I have been running Windows 7 & Windows 8 Beta - ever. If it is an older computer and is running 32-bit Vista, there is a good chance 32 bit Windows 8 will run on it, the memory footprint has decreased. I know the problem you are mentioning, it can be caused from many, many things. If the PC is in working order a cheap Windows 8 upgrade may be just what you need. You might gain system performance too, like here. Don't let the Metro haters scare you off either. I have an old HP Dual-Core Centrino laptop with 2Gb, that would run Vista and choke like clock work after updates, running any program of a decent size. It runs like it is brand new with Windows 8, it has for months with no issues whatsoever. Just my observations and an option.

I'd recommend you run this small Microsoft program;
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx
If autoruns shows left over parts of AVG . You might want to run the actual avg removal tool the company provides, not just the uninstall.
This is a common occurrence with many anti-virus programs.

That's annoying. A little explanation of what's going on would be useful.