Stand By Hanging on a Dell D620

Question

I've got a Dell Latitude D620 (WinXP) that is very finicky when it comes to Stand By. About half the time, it goes into Stand By with no issue. The other half it just hangs in the "Preparing to go to Stand By" step forever. Every now and again, the "Preparing..." message is interrupted to tell me that my Intel Wireless Driver is causing an issue with entering Stand By. However, I'm going ahead and calling my computer a liar, since I've disabled the wireless and still had it hang. This includes hitting the manual switch on the side as well as using the Device Manager to disable the card.

Additionally, if it does manage to get to Stand By, sometimes it will just shut down (on full battery). I'm not sure if this is at all related, but I thought I'd mention it.

Anybody know how I can get this fixed?

Answer 1

You might also trying uninstalling the drivers from the device manager and see if that helps. If the problem goes away it is more than likely an issue with the drivers.

To uninstall a driver on Win XP use the following instructions:

1. Open Device Manager (Right click on My Computer and select Properties, then click Device Manager).

2. Double–click the type of device that you want to uninstall.

3. Right–click the specific device you want to uninstall, and then click Uninstall.

4. In the Confirm Device Removal dialog box, click OK.

Answer 2

I have found that when a laptop refuses to standby like that it is caused by a process which refuses to shutdown. Outlook is a common culprit when it is running.

That is usually what causes this problem but there are other reasons as well. Uncommitted writes to disk and memory writes in the pipeline can also do this.

Answer 3

If your laptop is telling your drivers at fault you may as well give it the benefit of the doubt and update the drivers and see if that solves the problem.

The trick is to get to drivers directly from Intel because in my experience the all the drivers on the Dell site are terribly, terribly old.

Answer 4

Check your video Drivers

I had a D830 that had an issue with the Nvidia drive, after coming out of standby the system would go very slow! It was a known issue and the resolution was to use the current DELL specific Nvidia driver from the Dell Website.

Answer 5

Just because the interface is disabled doesn't mean that the driver isn't still active.

Usually when my laptop gets into that state (I've had a Lattitude D600 and have a D830 now) I end up doing a reinstall of the OS and applications, since this is usually just one of a number of annoying little problems.

Answer 6

Before blasting away drivers and applications take a look at your system's Event Log and see if there are any errors or warnings that correspond to the times you're trying to go into StandBy. Better yet, clear the logs, try going into StandBy and then after the problem occurs chekc the logs for any info.