Laptop Randomly Sleeping

[Gerry]

Hi folks,

 

I have been given a Dell Latitude E5450 to look at. User was complaining that it would suddenly switch off. I had it on for a few hours, ticking over without a problem when suddenly, screen goes black, then it comes back on to the lock screen, then black again, then lock screen etc. until eventually it goes black and stays black. Power light pulses indicating it's gone to sleep. I wake it up, and it sometimes goes back to sleep straight away or after a little while. Now it's been "awake" for a couple of hours straight. Power options are set to never sleep while plugged-in (which it is). Dell diagnostics reports it's A-Ok. Strange thing is, the same user had this issue with a previous laptop... Doesn't appear to be any logical reason for the sleep shenanigans!

[NviGate_Systems]

Most newer laptops use a magnetic switch for sleep control. Some have hotkey functions that can manually enter sleep. Is the battery and adapter OK? Some power schemes are very aggressive when on battery power, so a failure of DC Power and/or battery can cause behavior you mention.

 

I know our T500's are very aggressive on battery and if we don't tweak the values users come back saying the machine has "died".

[Gerry]

I read about the magnetic switch causing problems with bracelets, but it's not that (unless it's faulty). It's not manually entering sleep either, when it went funny I wasn't even touching it. Battery is charged, BIOS says it's health is excellent, and power scheme is set to always stay on.

[Gerry]

Just updated the BIOS to latest. Bitlocker kicked in and as I was typing the recovery key, screen went black and power light started flickering. Came back to itself after a couple of seconds but repeated the same behavior shortly after. Did this about 5 or six times before settling down. Now back into Win7, and it's behaving so far.

[Gerry]

Been in contact with Dell. If anyone's interested, it's getting the motherboard replaced. Seems the VGA board is knackered. I saw the same strange behaviour occur at the BIOS screen and while an external monitor was connected (both laptop and monitor went haywire). They told me it's a rare issue.

[HPlum78]

I have a daughter that does that! but I don't think its related to your laptop issue, although like her your issue could be hardware related.