Dell XPS PC - won't "wake up"

I have a Dell XPS 710, about 6-7 years old.

It will boot up just fine ( very quickly ) and I can use it as normal. However if I leave the PC
for a short amount of time it goes into "sleep" mode. I believe I have Hibernation turned off.

When I return, I move the mouse or hit a key on the keyboard and it won't "come on".
The monitor light is umber, not green and the Power light on the tower is lit, Green.

I have to manually turn off the PC and then push the power button to get it to come on.

Any fixes for this?

Also, I know this thing is old and dying, I'd like to save some files I have on it.

I've started putting my picture files on disc ( I've already backed them up on an external HD )

I would really like to save some music that I've Dl'd from the internet, whats the best way to do this?
Create a cd using "burn", a playable cd... or move the files to disc as "files" and not a playable cd?

does that make sense ?

Thanks,

What version of Windows are you using?

My laptop has been doing the same thing every now and again for 2 years, but I haven't found any indication of it affecting performance.

As for the music I would recommend backing it up on the external HD as well, burning discs takes ages if it's more than just a few CD's worth.

If it helps....I have a machine here that can be put into hibenation but will not come out of it. Just like yours. It works in every other way with no problems...It just will NOT work with Windows on any sort of lower state to fall into on the power saving config.

Have you gone into Control Panel -> Power Options to see what is all turned on and off? Perhaps something you installed tripped one of those settings back on thinking that saving you power was a good thing to do..without asking?

For saving your music.... If I might make a suggestion, go visit www.runtime.org... You have two choices which will do the trick and they are both 100% free. Shadow Copy and DriveImage XML. They both do roughly the same things in different ways and I've been using both myself for a few years with no problems or fails. If you do a full backup to restore a bootable and functional system some day, the Master Boot Record will require rebuilding with a Windows Recovery CD as the last step in the restore...so make sure you have one in advance. Simple directory or file copy is a snap though. Hope that helps!

Well your first problem is you own a dell.

Your second problem is that its a dell.

Boot with an Ubuntu Live CD you burned on another machine.

Copy off important files.

Format that mug and start over.

reply to post by elevatedone


First thing, go through your bios, disable power management. Second disable the turn off monitor after x time under your screen saver settings.

Thirdly when you buy a new pc simply take the hard drive out of your old del and fit it into one of the usb caddys.

As for backups, the easiest way would be to use a USB Hard Drive or Thumbstick, Dual layer DVD's are okay, or you can create a network share on another computer in your home and copy all your files to the other computer over the network. Its faster than all of the above.

reply to post by elevatedone

Has it always done this or is it a recent problem?

If the answer to that question is always then I would advise (if you feel comfortable doing it) trying a BIOS update for your machine which is on this page:
Dell XPS710 BIOS update page with instructions

As for the mp3 files, personally I would leave them as mp3, they are easy to carry around, whether on CD or a usb stick/drive. Some CD players can play mp3 natively too. I usually download flac audio files (lossless compression) and convert them to mp3 myself using the highest quality possible (320kbit/s).

External HD's are probably the way to go for short term backups but do bear in mind they will break eventually. I think my 1st usb drive died 1 month after the 1 year warranty had expired.

Good luck!

reply to post by elevatedone


Right-click a blank area of your desktop
left click properties
click on the screen saver tab
click on the power button
Under power schemes, select presentation
select the hibernate tab, uncheck enable hibernation
select ok, then ok again
restart computer

That should keep your unit from doing that again.

Transfer your downloaded music to your external hard drive.

ETA: If your unit still goes to sleep, you may have a display hijacker. A good malware scan should pick it up.
ETA2: The above is assuming your Windows is XP.

If I can help further, let me know.

Originally posted by metaldemon2000
Well your first problem is you own a dell.

Your second problem is that its a dell.

As retail computers go, I personally think Dell makes the best out there. But my first choice is always to build my own.

reply to post by elevatedone


My wife has a Toshiba Satellite Laptop, came with Windows 7 Home, and hers was doing the same thing. We fiddled with the power settings until we were blue in the face. Then she got hit with a nasty denial of service trojan, her yahoo account got hacked, and so did several social sites she belongs to.

She in now running my custom remaster of PC Linux, with security set as high as possible. Her laptop runs cooler, boots and runs faster, and she can not play games that would not play with Windows. PC Linux realizes and uses those dual cores on her AMD CPU. She can leave it on all day, and all it does is show the screensaver. Everything, including Realtek/Broadcom Wifi worked out of the box. As did the Nvidia drivers.