Member Avatar for TobyPC123

Hi Guys,

I have a laptop and sometimes when I take it out of hibernate the Hibernation bar fills up but the it just goes into a black screen and I have to turn it off by holding down the power button. Shutting down and then rebooting seems fine and sometimes it freezes coming out of standby.

Any help I would very much appreciate, thanks

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by starfireone

Dani AI

Generated

As described, the machine appears to complete the hibernate/standby sequence but then shows a black screen and needs a hard power-off. and correctly flagged that resume problems on XP can come from several places. The short checklist below focuses on diagnosing whether this is a display reinitialisation, a driver/firmware problem, a file-system/hiberfile issue, or real hardware failure so that the next fix is targeted rather than trial-and-error.

Start with quick, non-invasive checks to classify the problem:

  • Press CapsLock/NumLock and watch the keyboard LEDs; if they toggle the OS is likely still running but the display driver/hand-off failed.
  • Connect an external monitor or use the laptop display-toggle key (Fn+display) to see if an output is present off-screen.
  • Listen/watch for HDD activity or fan noise; if the machine responds to network pings (if network was enabled) it indicates the system isn’t fully frozen.

Collect system-side evidence and run basic repairs:

  • Inspect Event Viewer (System log) for errors or warnings at the resume time.
  • Run system/file checks to rule out corruption:
    sfc /scannow
chkdsk C: /f /r

    Back up important files before extensive disk repairs or restores.

  • Enable boot logging (F8 advanced options) and review C:\Windows\ntbtlog.txt to spot drivers that fail to load on resume.
  • Run a memory test (Memtest86) and the HDD vendor diagnostic to eliminate hardware faults.
  • Use Autoruns (Sysinternals) to review non-Microsoft drivers and kernel-mode components that load early.

How to narrow the culprit and next steps:

  • If the machine is responsive but the screen stays black, focus on the video/GPU driver: roll back or reinstall it.
  • If logs point to a third-party kernel driver, disable that component with Autoruns and retest.
  • If diagnostics don’t isolate the fault, note exact reproduction steps and times, then contact vendor support or consider a repair/install session with data backed up.

These diagnostics complement the earlier replies and help turn an intermittent resume hang into actionable evidence.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

assuming you are running winxp ,both those features are problematic. try disabling them and all should be well!you will just use a bit more of your battery power!

Member Avatar for starfireone

It could be one application that conflicts when hybernation is engaged. Two apps that caused it not to work right for me was Roxie and I believe the other one on a different laptop was McAfee. You might want to disable some apps that are running in the background that you don't need to be running through MSCONFIG. Do one at a time. Also you might want to try to see if you can locate the latest chipset drivers and also see if you have the latest BIOS update installed. Poorly written BIOS's will play hell on hybernation and standby modes....they will also cause all kind of strange issues during the day to day system usage.

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