Need computer help -- weird sleep problem

[Falkner]

I'm having an odd problem with my computer every time I try to put it in sleep mode. When I tell it to suspend, it seems to power down and I can hear the fans turn off, but my fan controller LED stays on for about 20 seconds or so. After that, the hard drive LED starts lighting up again for another 10 seconds before the system finally turns off. It's never done anything like that before, and it's odd that apparently parts of the system are still running long after all my fans/sound/video devices are shut down.

When I try to resume, everything comes back up fast except for video, which takes about 30 seconds before my monitor gets a signal again. After that, everything is running normal.

This only started a day ago. I ran memtest which gave no errors and the hard drive diagnostic program from WD which said my drive was fine. I would guess a bad PSU, but under full load my system is perfectly stable. I'm on a fresh (1 week old) install of Windows 7.

Any ideas?

[My name is Mudd]

Guesstimating that the fan controller bit (this is a 3rd-party piece, correct?) is due to 7's not being able to recognize it as a system component. It eventually shuts down due to the overall power 'loss' of sleep mode. I'm still on XP and therefore can't try to duplicate this on my machine, but in general the more aftermarket stuff (fan controllers, some RAID cards, etc) a system has, the less likely it is that certain secondary OS functions will do what it's supposed to.

[Falkner]

Well, I found the problem. My video card decided to die on me. After a few days of this strangeness, today I got artifacting and freezing in games, and then in Windows too. I took out my card and am running on my motherboard's integrated video and all is fine.

Great, now I have an expensive fix on my hands.

Can anyone recommend a good replacement for a Radeon 4890 that's 10 inches or less in length? I've got a tight case to work with.

[My name is Mudd]

If it doesn't say nVidia and built by BFG*, it ain't worth owning. Seriously.

* Lifetime limited warranty - basically, as long as you don't mod the card, they'll cover it for life...my 8800 GTS died on my after about 1 1/2 years and they promptly replaced it with a 9800 GTX+.

[Falkner]

Yeah, I'm planning on going back to Nvidia. I've never had a problem with them. In fact, my old 6800 is still going strong in a friends computer right now, and it's 4-5 years old by now. I try ATI every now and then, but all 3 cards I've owned have failed, and all within a year or two.

[My name is Mudd]

I've had two ATI cards and each one has crapped out literally three days after the warranty died. By comparison, my ancient, modded, and abused Ti 4200 AGP 8X is still capable of cranking out frames all day long and never gets above 175/F.

[Auzzie-Phoenix]

The question is who manufactured your ati cards? NVidia is a good company (albeit expensive), and certain brands of ATI cards do better. The only ATi I've had die was one of the core ATi branded ones, but my Sapphire radeons just keep going and going.

On a side note, that lifetime warranty is very appealing for the nvidia manuf. I'm going to let the people I know who use nvidia cards know about that particular company. Also, some manufacturers try to get by with onboard cooling solutions that are not appropriate for the heat generated by the device (core ATi, and a few offbrands try to get by with this), which will eventually result in failure.

If you notice overheating in your system on the cpu or video gpu, please make sure to inspect the heatsinks and fans for dust buildup, and clean them out. That will help to insure that internal components don't die an unnatural death prematurely.

[Falkner]

Mine was an XFX card. I know they have a good warranty on them, but i forgot to fill out the form within the 30 days of purchase so I may be SOL as far as that goes. I'll have to see if they feel like being nice to me.

This card was running hot for a while. I didn't notice until months after I bought it that my card would hit 85-95C under load because it never ran the fan at more than 27%. I manually set it higher after I discovered that and it was running at 60C under load until it died. I'm guessing that it might have cooked itself into a premature death because of poor fan control.

If I'm going to replace it, I was looking at this GTX 470: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130549

Though I'm not sure if I feel safe running that with only a 700 watt PSU (it says it needs 550 but I don't want to push it) or if my CPU could even keep up with it (Phenom x4 955BE).

[Falkner]

Here's a lesson in how the simplist solution is often the correct one...

My card's drivers had somehow become corrupted. After an uninstall/driver cleaner/reinstall everything seems to be going just fine again. Don't ask me why that wasn't the first thing I tried when I narrowed down the problem. And to think I like to call myself computer literate

[My name is Mudd]

Which driverset did you/do you have? There were warnings released about the 196.75 drivers possibly bugging up cards, and in some cases actually killing the card.

[Falkner]

Originally Posted by My name is Mudd

Which driverset did you/do you have? There were warnings released about the 196.75 drivers possibly bugging up cards, and in some cases actually killing the card.

That's Nvidia though. I run ATI with the latest Cat 10.5

I feel like even more of an idiot now that I realize my sleep issue was my fault too - I forgot to disable hybrid sleep. Time for me to go relearn basic troubleshooting

[My name is Mudd]

Originally Posted by Falkner

That's Nvidia though. I run ATI with the latest Cat 10.5

Oh yeah...oops. Never mind.

[Lurker79]

Originally Posted by My name is Mudd

If it doesn't say nVidia and built by BFG*, it ain't worth owning. Seriously.

QFT. I'm a fanboy and proud. 285GTX sli. Gnarls...