Railworks America

Been having problems with my power button. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't unless I wiggle it a little. It has been getting worse so last night I thought I would leave it on and put it in sleep mode. When I did, my power button turned yellow instead of the blue it usually is. The computer also got quiet. While gathering up stuff from desktop to organize it a little I accidently bumped my mouse and the computer started back up, but the screen continued to stay black on both monitors. I waited and waited, about 20 minutes and it never came back. I started hitting keys in multiple combinations. Nothing worked, it was running but not displaying. I shut it down completely and turned it back on and it was still in sleep mode. Several times...

How do you wake it up?

I had to shut it down and unplugged it from the outlet over night to get it back up????

Have you run a registry check lately. I do a registry cleaning about once a week just to get rid of actions not needed.

Just fired up Steam. All my game's categories were opened up and the screen was small. Had to maximize it and I also had to log in which I have not done in years. Then to top it off. My copy of Trainz T:ANE and Trainz 2012 are listed as un installed. Now isn't that bizarre? I am going to check if they still work as the files are still on my HD. Ya know sometimes I really hate computors.

davedingler wrote:Have you run a registry check lately. I do a registry cleaning about once a week just to get rid of actions not needed.

No I have not done that since my registry got screwed up a year or so ago running one of those cleaner programs and then I had to reinstall about 35 different programs as they quit working cause the references were cleaned out of my registry.

What would that have to do with Sleep Mode?

artimrj wrote:Just fired up Steam. All my game's categories were opened up and the screen was small. Had to maximize it and I also had to log in which I have not done in years. Then to top it off. My copy of Trainz T:ANE and Trainz 2012 are listed as un installed. Now isn't that bizarre? I am going to check if they still work as the files are still on my HD. Ya know sometimes I really hate computors.

I don't like those symptoms.
Have you done a full backup recently? You probably should do so right away, and then check the harddrives for SMART reports and file system errors. They do wear out, and when quite full, the remaining free sectors get used a lot, including parts of the boot sectors, where many programs hide their activation status.

Bob, did you use CCleaner to clean your registry? I've never had a problem with that one.

Never clean your registry unless you are having some kind of slow down. That cleaning your registry once a week is a bad idea.

Back at Bob.
What you are describing, sounds like your system got reset and at least one of the caches won't stay in memory, or maybe some program cleared the DNS cache.

How old is your Mother Board Bob? It's rare, but if your PC build is over 5 years old, the battery might be dead for the CMOS.
It's a little coin cell on the Mobo.

Other than that you may actually have had a hardware failure of some sort.

Ericmopar wrote:Bob, did you use CCleaner to clean your registry? I've never had a problem with that one.

Never clean your registry unless you are having some kind of slow down. That cleaning your registry once a week is a bad idea.

Back at Bob.
What you are describing, sounds like your system got reset and at least one of the caches won't stay in memory, or maybe some program cleared the DNS cache.

How old is your Mother Board Bob? It's rare, but if your PC build is over 5 years old, the battery might be dead for the CMOS.
It's a little coin cell on the Mobo.

Other than that you may actually have had a hardware failure of some sort.

Yes, Eric could be quite right in suggesting the little battery that keeps the CMOS is dead. When you then start your computer for the first time, its internal clock falls back to some BIOS default, which is way in the past. Games and programs that check the clock for their activation date and time will balk.

Nevertheless, keep a current back up when you are a content creator.

Thanks guys but that is not any of the problem. Just so you know, my first computer was a 8088 with an amber monitor of the 13" variety. When we got CGA it was like a God send, 4 colors yeah! ANd I have been under the hood the whole time. I used to own a computer store and built custom computers for several schools and many businesses and lots of people in my area. Back when Networking was a lot of cabling...

And yes Eric I used CCleaner and that is what trashed me. I still have it installed but have never used it again.

All hardware is fine here except the dam power switch. and SLEEP mode. Been running fine since 7:30 this morning too.

Bob
As I understand it you used "SLEEP" mode due to a dodgy on/off button on your PC??
There have been quite a few issues with Windows and using "SLEEP" mode (Google) and that may be what has happened when you try to re-start from that mode. Windows power management has been buggy for some time and although your issue could be hardware related - I take it that you did not have this problem before you used "SLEEP" Mode.

Is your BIOS up to date?
Can you get the on/off button fixed.
Have you tries a "Clean Boot" to see if everything works OK from that (Google Clean Boot Windows X xx-bit).

By all means check the CMOS battery but usually they work or fail with not much in between.

Regards
pH

I just read your OP again Bob. I wonder if it's as simple as a broken power switch?
What has me confused though, is that some of the symptoms smell of BIOS being reset or corrupted.

PSU problem? I've never had a PSU go bad, but I know from reading that can cause some pretty strange symptoms in a PC.

Has your neighbourhood been ravaged by a severe thunderstorm recently or any bad shocks when touching your computer?

I keep thinking BIOS, because that's what selects power switch modes and colours when in standby etc.

AT Pete - No it never happened before as I never used sleep before, never saw the point.

At Eric - BIOS/CMOS all looks fine, all settings are what they should be right down to the correct time by the second.

Looking in to a new power switch, Geek Squad should be able to fix me up.

Bob -

Your report of CCleaner hosing your system is the first time I've read that, although I guess it's certainly possible it's happened to others. I personally have used it hundreds of times on two different machines with two different OS (XP and 8.1), and have never had a hiccup. In Cleaner mode, I only let it clean out Temp Internet, System Temp and Cookies files. But in Registry mode I normally have all the boxes checked. Just curious if you used the CCleaner Reg. backup function before you ran it and the backup failed to set things right?

Re Windows and sleep mode, I had it turned on on both machines and I had nothing but trouble with it on both of them. My lazy OS didn't want to wake up. I routinely keep it turned off now.

Hope a bad switch is all you're looking at.

Al

Yep, I've never had trouble with CCleaner either. I use it sparingly, only after a lot of installs of drivers, which I don't do very often anymore.
I'm not saying it couldn't have hosed Bobs machine though.

I've never had a problem with sleep mode on any windows machine I've owned. I'm stumped by hearing these stories of sleep mode not working correctly.
I have noticed that Steam will frequently say it doesn't have a internet connection after waking from sleep, even though it is connected, but that is a Steam problem not Windows.

Drivertime do you have a AMD based PC like Bob?

Ericmopar:

My computer specs:

Dell XPS 8700 Special Ed.; Windows 8.1 64Bit; Intel i7 4770 Quad Core CPU; 225GB SSD; 2TB Data HD; 24GB RAM; Radeon R9 270 Graphics Card – 2GB RAM; Dell Touch 23” WS Hi Def Monitor. Train Sim 20xx is on the SSD.

Those of us who have had the sleep>wake problem do seem to be in the minority, although a search produces several links on the subject. Glad you've had no issues with it.

CCleaner did not hose my system, it got rid of registry entires it thought were bad, like my PMDG entries and Snag It and 3D Crafter to name a few. Windows and the system still worked fine. Cleaning the registry did not make any noticable improvement either. I normally don't bother with those things but something I was installing at the time suggested I do it. I just let it do it's default thing and it deleted 4 or 500 entries.