OS doesn't want to wake up

**slofox** · 23rd November 2011, 10:30

OK whizzkiddies, answer me this one if'n ya can...

The home puter doesn't want to start its OS (that great leap backwards, Windows Vista Home Edition...)

We get as far as the motherboard splash screen and no further will it go. There's a list of key functions appears along the bottom of the splash screen but none of them have the slightest effect on anything that I can see.

Anyone got any ideas or do I take it to "the man" (and shell out ten gazillion megabucks...).

Ta in advance all.

**bogan** · 23rd November 2011, 10:37

How long have you waited for? Win7 sometimes decides to take a few mins to do its thing.

**slofox** · 23rd November 2011, 10:45

Originally Posted by bogan

How long have you waited for? Win7 sometimes decides to take a few mins to do its thing.

It ran about 20 minutes this morning with nary a sign of life...

**avgas** · 23rd November 2011, 10:54

Turn on the computer, every 5 seconds hit F8.

Should give you a boot menu, select "Safe Mode"

When it lets you in, go to "My Computer", open it up. Right Click on the hard-drive and select "properties", click the "Tools" tab.
There should be an "error checking" or "check disk".
Hit "Check now"
Tick both tick boxes, and hit "Start"

It should say something along the lines of "This will be checked next restart".

Restart your computer.
Give it some time and it should sort itself out.

**slofox** · 23rd November 2011, 10:56

Originally Posted by avgas

Turn on the computer, every 5 seconds hit F8.

Should give you a boot menu, select "Safe Mode"

When it lets you in, go to "My Computer", open it up. Right Click on the hard-drive and select "properties", click the "Tools" tab.
There should be an "error checking" or "check disk".
Hit "Check now"
Tick both tick boxes, and hit "Start"

It should say something along the lines of "This will be checked next restart".

Restart your computer.
Give it some time and it should sort itself out.

T'anx avgas - you da man! I'll try it when I get home tonight.

**Sable** · 23rd November 2011, 11:13

And when you've done that back up your important shit, format and install Windows 7.

**SMOKEU** · 23rd November 2011, 11:14

Originally Posted by Sable

And when you've done that back up your important shit, format and install Windows 7.

+1 to that, or a good Linux distro like Ubuntu or Mint.

**Gremlin** · 23rd November 2011, 11:14

The motherboard splash screen may have F keys along the bottom, you're looking for Boot Menu or something like that, then do as avgas says. Could also be F10 or F12, varies from manufacturer to manufacturer

**iYRe** · 23rd November 2011, 12:22

if its a laptop and you have closed the lid and hybernated or some such, and you are expecting to wake it up.. well.. moving to linux wont help (especially bad at waking up).

Most of the time this is due to it having to "wake up" too many things in the background and stalling. I would not recommend this as a method to prevent closing/shutting/rebooting..

Shut it down properly, and start it up properly - you dont leave the key on in the bike (or running, for that matter) overnight because its faster to start it in the morning :P

Otherwise you need to start by making sure as less crap as possible is installed/running (use ccleaner to sort it out - www.piriform.com) and reboot then see if it is better. Afore mentioned scandisk will help, as will a defrag. Definite upgrade to win 7 will help the machine in general - might not solve this issue though, as it is fairly generic.

**slofox** · 23rd November 2011, 12:36

Originally Posted by iYRe

if its a laptop and you have closed the lid and hybernated or some such, and you are expecting to wake it up.. well.. moving to linux wont help (especially bad at waking up).

Most of the time this is due to it having to "wake up" too many things in the background and stalling. I would not recommend this as a method to prevent closing/shutting/rebooting..

Shut it down properly, and start it up properly - you dont leave the key on in the bike (or running, for that matter) overnight because its faster to start it in the morning :P

Otherwise you need to start by making sure as less crap as possible is installed/running (use ccleaner to sort it out - www.piriform.com) and reboot then see if it is better. Afore mentioned scandisk will help, as will a defrag. Definite upgrade to win 7 will help the machine in general - might not solve this issue though, as it is fairly generic.

It's a desk top model. And it was turned off overnight before it refused to wake up.

This is a recent acquisition and has very little installed on it. Yet. The start-up menu is pretty sparse as well.

Thanks for the advice.

**iYRe** · 23rd November 2011, 12:48

right.. well a couple of things I would try..

power off and power out.. the usual thing, wait 30 secs.. some people hit the "power on" button while waiting - they think it helps discharge capacitors and stuff, doesnt matter if you do or dont afaik.

Go into the bios and choose "reset to defaults" - might clear some odd setting that has some how got set.

Start hitting F8 as soon as the boot screen comes up - some times it is actually loading windows but has stalled somewhere before it can display something on the screen. Might then give you the option to boot into safemode.

If it is a fairly new computer, take it back whence it came - it should not be behaving like this from the get-go. It could be a faulty CPU, RAM, HDD, Video Card - or the driver associated with it. Once, years ago, when I used windows, I was talking to a M$ dev team member, and he said that these problems are often driver problems, and that driver problems can be because:
a: the driver is corrupt
b: the driver is corrupt because the disk sector it is stored on is faulty.
c: the driver cant initialise because the hardware it is interfacing with is faulty
d: wrong driver forced onto some essential hardware, making it act like it is faulty.

I'd offer to come have a look, but i'm in AK - and the wife is due to have a baby in the next week or so, lol..

**sil3nt** · 23rd November 2011, 12:51

Don't spend money getting someone to look at it. I will come look if the advice in this thread does not help.

But just to be clear the PC works fine but the problem is the computer goes to sleep but does not wake up?

**iYRe** · 23rd November 2011, 12:56

Originally Posted by sil3nt

Don't spend money getting someone to look at it. I will come look if the advice in this thread does not help.

But just to be clear the PC works fine but the problem is the computer goes to sleep but does not wake up?

no, he said it was powered off. Bit of confusion with what "waking up" means i think :P

**slofox** · 23rd November 2011, 13:06

Originally Posted by sil3nt

Don't spend money getting someone to look at it. I will come look if the advice in this thread does not help.

But just to be clear the PC works fine but the problem is the computer goes to sleep but does not wake up?

The computer was off overnight. Normal shutdown. This morning it did as described.