Member Avatar for MiketheBook

My wife's Vista has started to have problems with the desktop fragmenting especially with browsers, text and toolbars in the wrong place, applications difficult to access and only partially visible and appearing/disappearing. At first I thought it was Internet Explorer 8 and uninstalled that. Now I'm wondering whether it might have anything to do with sleep mode since on first starting the computer is fine. Problems seem to start after it sleeps. Anyone provide any ideas? Its frustrating and I'm almost at the point of uninstalling Vista in favour of XP though I could do without that hassle right now.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by caperjack

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— good call trying the sleep workaround and thanks to for the suggestion. That fix proves the problem is resume-related, which is useful: it’s a workaround, but not necessarily the root cure.

Resume/render glitches like you described are most commonly caused by graphics-driver or power-management issues (the Desktop Window Manager/Aero compositor not redrawing correctly after sleep), chipset or BIOS oddities, or third‑party shell/startup software that doesn’t handle suspend/resume. Recommended next steps focus on diagnosis first, then repair if needed.

Checklist (prioritized):

  • Update the video driver from the GPU maker (NVIDIA/AMD/Intel), and update the motherboard/chipset drivers and BIOS per the vendor’s instructions.
  • Make sure Vista has current service updates installed.
  • Check Event Viewer around the time of resume (System/Application) for display/driver errors.
  • Run sfc /scannow to catch corrupted system files.
  • Test with a Clean Boot (msconfig) to rule out startup utilities and with the Basic (non‑Aero) theme to see if DWM/Aero is involved.
  • Create a new user account and test sleep/resume; if the problem is profile‑specific, a corrupted user profile or shell extension may be the cause.
  • In Device Manager, under device Power Management, uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” for suspect devices and test again.

If updating drivers/BIOS fixes it, re-enable sleep and run several sleep/resume cycles to confirm. If no fix is available from vendors, using hibernate or disabling sleep as a long‑term workaround is reasonable, but create a System Restore point and back up important data before driver/BIOS changes. For older hardware with no updated drivers, consider moving to a newer OS release where resume-handling and driver support are improved.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

stop using sleep mode ,disable it

Member Avatar for MiketheBook

Can you tell me how to do that on Vista?

Member Avatar for MiketheBook

Thanks. I've stopped the computer from sleeping and the problem appears to be resolved.

Member Avatar for caperjack

Thanks. I've stopped the computer from sleeping and the problem appears to be resolved.

that great ,and sleep mode is not really necessary anyway ,good luck

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