Member Avatar for supercomputer

I recently reinstalled Windows 10 on my laptop, since then it has been randomy not sleeping properly. After I had shut the lid of the laptop, I'd come back and find the laptop was 'on', as in the fan was running very quietly, the power lights and hard drive lights were on, but the screen appeared to be off. Pressing buttons or touching the screen did nothing, I had to turn it off by pressing the power. At first I didn't pay much attention to when this was happening, and I assumed some software setting was waking up my computer, so I changed the lid close setting from 'sleep' to hibernate, so it would require a physical button press to wake up. It continued to happen, and I've since realised that it is not waking up, but rather not sleeping or hibernating properly. Occisaonly when I close it, the computer dosen't power off like it should, and opening the lid back up shows the computer still on but unresponsive, with a black screen, having seemingly not entered hibernation.

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by mariah1902

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A compact, practical troubleshooting path to add to the thread — complements ’s symptom report and the suggestions from and without repeating their exact steps.

Start by gathering objective evidence. In Event Viewer (Windows Logs → System) filter for sleep/resume sources; note timestamps and match them to lid-close events. Common useful markers are Kernel‑Power entries for unexpected power events and Power‑Troubleshooter entries for resumes. Those timestamps make it easier to tell whether the system attempted to enter a low‑power state or simply never did.

Isolate the layer causing the problem (firmware, drivers, OS power settings, third‑party utilities, or hardware). Quick checklist: disable Fast Startup and any hybrid‑sleep option; disconnect docks/peripherals and test; temporarily remove OEM power utilities; test sleep initiated from the Start menu versus closing the lid; try a clean graphics driver reinstall (use the laptop vendor’s recommended package where available). Recreate the hibernation file to rule out corruption by toggling hibernation off and on (requires admin).

Collect short diagnostic outputs that reveal blockers and wake sources. From an elevated prompt run:

powercfg /requests

and, on devices that support it,

powercfg /sleepstudy

Save the resulting output/HTML and correlate with Event Viewer entries. Also scan Task Scheduler for tasks configured to “wake the computer” and check network adapter power settings (wake-on-LAN) in Device Manager.

If these steps don’t resolve the black‑screen-but-still‑on behavior, the collected Event Viewer entries plus the powercfg reports make it practical to escalate to the laptop vendor with exact model and firmware/driver versions, or to continue deeper debugging (driver rollback, firmware/EC updates, or capturing kernel power traces).

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

The usual story is that the owner installed Windows but omitted the usual updates from the laptop or machine maker for BIOS, drivers and apps. I've run into cases where the BIOS had to be updated, always had to get drivers from the maker (not Microsoft since their PCs seem to be automatically supported) and then for some machines Apps that control things like sleep.

Your OS install may be finished but what about the post OS work?

Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

You might want to have a look at the powercfg command line utility that comes with Windows. It might be that one or more of your devices are set to wake the computer from a sleep state. To see if any are "armed" you can type:

powercfg -devicequery wake_armed

To see if a device woke up the system type:

powercfg -lastwake
Member Avatar for mariah1902

Surely it is a windows problem. Just reboot your device with the latest windows 10 again.

commented: Late. Be more timely. +0
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