Dell 2650 Suspend mode blues

[alm4rr]

Hi
If i put my Dell XP home lappie into suspend mode, it takes about 30 mins from the time I wake it up to shutdown.
Why does the laptop run like a 486 after coming out of suspend?

Thx

 

[Bacinator]

I don't have the answer, but just wanted to add, that I have never consistently been able to revive my system from "sleep/suspend" mode. So I never turn it off now, I just made sure the monitor powers off after 30mins of inactivity.

How much more juice does an idle computer suck up compared to a sleeping comp? Not enough to worry about... But I'm not running on batteries either...

 

[alm4rr]

yea I disabled everything power saving about it. XP boots fast enuff that I can just start it up. If I leave it on and close the lcd, it stays on. Doesnt bother me cuz I never close the lcd w/o shutting it off.

But yea, that suspend is a problem.

Any tips?

 

[alm4rr]

anyone?

 

[Bacinator]

Heh... Looks like no takers... But I misspoke when I said "never". I have never been able to recover from any suspend mode since windows 98. Just wanted to correct my implied "current system" only statement.

 

[alm4rr]

haha yea

what OS were you having trouble with it?
and you say 98 suspends fine?

 

[AJPatel]

I'd use "Hibernate" on XP if I were you. It works a little better than the Suspend did. It works pretty well for my laptop I just put it to Hibernate when I close the display.

 

[alm4rr]

Is there much of a difference in the power draw between hibernate and suspend? I was using the suspend key to put it into power saving mode.

thx for reply =)

 

[EricT]

Is there much of a difference in the power draw between hibernate and suspend?

The difference is nothing (hibernate) compared to something (suspend)...

Hibernate means that the laptop writes a file as big as the amount of RAM to the hard drive which contains the exact contents of your RAM. When you restart (open the lid) that file is read & written to RAM. The end-result is your pc just like it was before you closed the lid to put it in hibernation.

Suspend is almost the same thing : your pc shuts down but the memory is still powered. When you restart, the machine "is back" much faster because it only needs to properly start all devices rather than start those devices AND reed a 256Meg (or 512Meg) file from the hard drive.

Have you looked at the DELL site for BIOS upgrades ? From personal experience I can only recommend visiting their often and always keeping your machine flashed up to date (but wait at least 2 weeks after a new version is released). Other known issues with suspend are add-ons like misbehaving (scsi) pc-cards etc. NAI's Sniffer PRO version 4.5 and 4.6 killed my laptop on suspend (fixed in 4.7) and open VMWARE sessions are also a definite NO-No.

Hope this helps...

 

[alm4rr]

Yea this happened the day it came in the box.
brand spankin new =)

only running a few programs, nothing special.