Last night my mother was using the old family computer. However rather than actually shut down, she put it into sleep mode instead and turned off the power at the socket.

This morning, the computer doesnt work. It turns on, the lights flash, but the monitor remains on standby, the keyboard (my oldLogitech G510) doesnt light up and the system just sits there. When turning it on, it sometimes just turns itself back off immediately.

No BIOS screens or welcome screens come up, but using another monitor doesnt change anything, so I doubt its that.

Has she somehow bricked the system? Even cleaning out everything and turning everything on and off does nothing, so I'm at a loss. Has the motherboard been fried possibly or something as a result of losing power when in sleep mode?

Pretty much the only reason I disable sleep/hibernate mode on every computer in the house.

I don't know, I have my laptop technically on for weeks at a time - just shup the lid and put it too sleep; unless it's different for laptops.

Ah, so is this a problem you've encountered before Terash?


My laptop is nearly always in sleep mode as well, and usually that gives me no problems. This time though on a desktop....I'm at a total loss.

Yup... Gone through different monitor, video cards on one of my mom's old computers. I suspected it had something to do with sleep mode even though I never used it.

Any chance you fixed it somehow?

I replaced a video card and used a different monitor.... which eventually worked as for the monitor that was used originally it never displayed again.... which also made me think it was some sort of driver problem.

my computer doesn't like sleep mode either... first time someone was at my computer they put it on sleep mode and it wouldn't wake up until i did a forced shutdown by holding in the power button
second time they did it i modified the registry to not allow sleep mode to be activated because i already told them never to put my computer in sleep mode

since it sounds like your computer still tries to start up then your best bet would be to check if the operating system was corrupted from the abrupt/rude shutdown caused by unplugging the computer while it's still on
and the best way to check for that is to try a linux live cd like knoppix

Yep my desktop is exactly the same. I found out later I wasn't 'waking it up' properly. You have to press and hold the power button but if you do it too long it does a hard shut down. Only time I do it now is by accident... :\

You could try "resetting" BIOS back to default state. Way to do that should be described in the motherboard manual, it's usually either pulling out small button battery or closing a circuit on a particular jumper.

That's weird, I always put my PC in sleep mode. Especially if I know I'll be on it again in a few hours. I've never had that problem. My laptop is left in sleep mode for months on end.

So, the computer was a desktop, someone put it to sleep mode, and then disconnected the power source to the computer?

Yeah, that sounds like one of Window's "secret" weak spots.

I remember accidentally hitting "Switch User," where there was only one user, and Vista really didn't like that -- computer black screened and did some flashes and unresponsiveness for a few minutes until it managed to get to the login screen, D=

It could be that the PC's on its last legs, and the dirty shut down (does what happened count as a dirty shut down?) just pushed it over that line. This has happened to my second, old PC quite a few times. What usually worked for me (and no, I can't explain it), is leaving the thing off for a few days and then trying again later.

If that doesn't work, yes, your PC's broken.

All electronics can die when it's turns on, even if it's rather rare. Old lightbulbs were especially notorious for this, but it can happen to anything you switch on/off. So it's not really the fault of the sleep mode, just bad luck.

Only question now is what part of your computer was it exactly that died, was it the motherboard or something else?

Well it doesnt even boot to my mobo OS screen, so running a different OS isnt really an option.

When I say "old", I mean about 3 years. This computer is my old gaming machine that I out out the back for the family to use. So its not really "old".

Would resetting the mobo possibly do anything to fix this?

It's worth a shot.

edit: come to think of it, I had a very similar problem on my laptop. It was in sleep mode, tried to turn it back on, and nothing happened. OS wouldn't load or anything. As I recall, I ended up having to boot from a windows install disc before I could finally restore the laptop to factory settings. Unfortunately, my bios was the only thing working during that incident.

I've yet to have a computer go south because of sleep mode, even though I rarely use it. I'd say the problem more likely stemmed from your mother basically forcing a hard/unexpected shutdown on it. If parts were already beginning to fail, something like that could have pushed it over the edge.

Hard shutdowns are hard on electronics. I'd suggest explaining to her that if she wants to turn the PC off, it should be turned off normally via the OS. Never pull the plug, especially not in sleep mode.

Power the PC and Monitor down, then unplug them both.

Wait about an hour and plug them back in and give it another shot.

My old PC was like that, it's fried.

- I dunno but she's blown something.

So...did she turn it off at the socket on purpose? Did she think "Sleep + Unplug" was a better alternative?

As Freddo said, anything can die when you turn it on, so it's most likely not sleep. I leave my desktop in sleep mode while I'm at work during the day and I've had the power go out at the house and it starts up just like I had shut it down.

ever since I had my first PC in 1995 i never NEVER EVER use the sleep mod I just rather shut it off

I don't like to shut mine off, but it's part of cutting the cost of my bill. I rarely use sleep mode. All this because I've had some PCs go down due to constantly being turned on from a "cold state". It is better to keep them running for as long as possible with the least amount of shutting down as possible..

I put my computer to sleep multiple times a day. Have been since I bought it last year.

When I go to school, my computer takes a nap. When I go to bed, my computer goes to bed. When I use the bathroom, my computer uses the bathroom.

I let my PC sleep, mostly because I drift off to sleep watching stuff, and I don't want the sound of my fans bothering me all night. A little after the video stops playing, the screen and PC go to sleep, so I can do the same.

I'm unable to access any BIOS or anything, so is loading from a Windows Install Disk even possible? This machine's mobo has its own Asus Operating system and start-up screen, and even that doesnt come up.


One of the first things I tired, no change.


She's not an experienced PC user by any possible definition. She just didnt think.



Well I can now confirm every time the computer is turned on, the system turns on, the fans come on, the lights come on, then everything immediatly turns off 10 seconds later, and then the whole thing reboots (but with nothing actually, you know, booting). Would I be right in thinking that this is possibly a mobo or psu failure?