Dell Computers in stagnant state

[Nemwar7]

Hi,

 

I have an issue which is effecting multiple sites and multiple dell optiplex models.

 

All was working well until about 4 months ago. Teachers would come into school in the morning and the green power button would be lit up, the dvd drive can be ejected, but there is no display. Pushing the power button does not bring it out of a hibernate\standby state. The only way to get the computer to boot up is to do a dirty shutdown. However there are no event logs saying that there was a dirty shutdown.

 

I have tried:

• updating bios firmware
  
• updating video drivers
  
• setting shutdown/wakeup schedules.
  
• Full windows update
  
• Removed all power management settings.
  
• BIOS config has not changed.
  

 

Has anyone else come across this issue or have any advise on what direction I should be heading towards.

 

Thanks,

 

Warren

[FN-GM]

What type of OptiPlex are they?

 

Do you have something running at night to close down the machines?

[Nemwar7]

optiplex 380, 390 and 3010.

 

We had schedules running to wake-up computers and shut them down for windows updates, but removing the schedules makes no difference.

[sted]

try disabling wake on lan in the bios on 1 maybe there is some rogue task waking them

[Nemwar7]

Forgot to mention, when the computer is in this state, I cannot ping it.

[3s-gtech]

Are they hibernating or going into standby? We had immense issues with both and not waking up - we disabled both and disk spin-down. Uses more power, but I lose less hair. They're then all shut down remotely at night.

[chazzy2501]

I'd change the standby mode from S1 to S3 or vice versa. and if you have the option tell it to wake the VGA. I'd also be tempted to install older video drivers.

[mac_shinobi]

Restore BIOS to factory defaults and then adjust some items ie boot order and possibly SATA Mode etc and if you have any passwords on the BIOS to put those back etc and try again

 

Also when you say drivers with ref to updating them, is this from the Dell website or from the manufacturers website ie Intel or whoever ?

 

I noticed for the Dell E6400 and some other models that they have / make , the Dell website seems to have out dated drivers in comparison to say Intel or whoever ie broadcomm, Marvel Yukon etc etc so I prefer to download from the manufacturer sites ( not Dell ) for drivers etc, see if that helps at all ?

[newpersn]

I know if you try to update the video drivers on the dells 380s. It wont let you. You have to use dells drivers. Intel driver tells you its not support or wrong driver.

[mac_shinobi]

I know if you try to update the video drivers on the dells 380s. It wont let you. You have to use dells drivers. Intel driver tells you its not support or wrong driver.

 

If you have an older Dell driver for video or other components it says Unknown or not a recognised device etc, if you go into device manager --> find the relevant device etc --> right click --> uninstall --> tick / check the check box to delete the driver

 

DO NOT REBOOT and then go to the intel downloads site ( downloads.intel.com ) something like that to auto detect and install drivers and should be able to install from intel website, if you do reboot then it uses the windows 7 driver ( which may have been updated to the dell driver which then puts the dell driver back in )

 

update - website url for intel should be ( Click the continue button at the top left and follow that through and allow / install the add ons etc ) downloadcenter.intel.com

Edited January 22, 2014 by mac_shinobi

[Nemwar7]

Thanks guys, I will try some of the recommendations you have mentioned and come back with the results. It's a slow process as I normally have to wait a day before I can verify if a theory is correct or incorrect.