Boswell's Q&A
Daydreaming Laptops
Windows XP laptops continue to "sleep" from Standby mode.
- By Bill Boswell
- 08/10/2004
Question: My laptop users have this nagging problem. They
close the lid on their laptops, which puts them in Standby. When they
open the lid, the screen stays black. I know the machine wakes up because
I can make a network connection, but users can't get any screen action
at all. They have to do a cold restart.
We're running Windows XP Service Pack 1 on a mix of Dell, HP and Toshiba
laptops. Not all the laptops have the problem, but it shows up on any
vendor's box. What's up?
—Wayne
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Answer: It just so happens that I know the solution to
this problem because I was also afflicted by it. It turns out to be caused
by a race condition in the power management software. It's documented
in KB Article 833740, "The
monitor does not turn on when you open the lid after you configure the
energy-saving settings on a Windows XP-based portable computer."
The problem is supposed to be fixed in Windows XP SP2, but I'm running
the release candidate and I still get the symptom. Maybe the fix is in
the gold code that was released a couple of days ago. I'll let you know
as soon as I get a copy installed on a test laptop.
The workaround is to add a key (not a value, but a key) to the Registry.
Here are the details:
Parent key: HKLM | System | CurrentControlSet | Control
| GraphicsDriver
New key: LidCloseSetPower
As soon as I added this Registry hack on my laptop and rebooted, I did
not experience the symptom any longer. I haven't had any odd side effects,
other than a strange compulsion to watch Charmed
on The WB network.
May the Power of Three protect you.
About the Author
Contributing Editor Bill Boswell, MCSE, is the principal of Bill Boswell Consulting, Inc. He's the author of Inside Windows Server 2003 and Learning Exchange Server 2003 both from Addison Wesley. Bill is also Redmond magazine's "Windows Insider" columnist and a speaker at MCP Magazine's TechMentor Conferences.