Black Screen When Coming Out of Sleep Mode

Hello all;

For the past several mornings, when clicking my mouse to wake my PC from sleep mode, my screen remains completely black. I can hear the PC start up, the fan running, etc. I can even hear the Windows log on sound when I punch in my password. All power lights are on, but the monitor refuses to display anything, not even a blinking cursor.

My keyboard then becomes unresponsive and I'm unable to shut my PC down using the power button. I've had to hard reboot several times by manually switching my surge protector off and on. After getting the expected message that Windows didn't shut down properly, my system then starts up as usual.

I have Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit). My processor is an AMD Athlon II X4 630 and I have 6 GB of RAM. Both my PC and monitor are brand new. I would greatly appreciate any advice. Thank you.

Have you tried hitting the space bar or power button instead of the mouse movement?

Have you tried setting it to not ask for a password when waking up?

How old is the monitor?

This is the closest post I've found to an apparent new variation of the unresponsive black screen issue. Mine started several weeks ago (late July 2012). Perhaps my diagnostics will help lead to a fix. I've reviewed hundreds of posts and tried dozens of fixes without success.

Sleep mode always leads to crash on awakening. However, the system also similarly crashes after idle with sleep mode disabled and crashes during active use in a similar manner.

Symptoms: video shuts down (monitor goes into the analog/digital scan when the signal disappears and then goes to sleep)--no display at all. Computer power light remains on (sometimes solid, sometimes flashing; flashing seems to be associated with sleep mode even though disabled--crash after idle often has a flashing power light, crash during use has a solid power light). The fans continue to run and some device LED indicators remain on. The hard disk continues to spin but there is no access activity. Attached USB peripherals remain on and do not indicate a loss of connection. The computer is unresponsive to keyboard or mouse. It is also unresponsive to the power button. The only way to restart is to pull the power cord, wait about 30 seconds and plug it back in. (Plugging the power cord back in after less than about 30 seconds leaves the computer powered off and unresponsive.) The computer then powers up without pressing the power button and goes to the safe mode option screen. Logs indicate that the computer shut down unexpectedly, which could be from pulling the power cord. The crash doesn't leave diagnostics that I can find. Time to crash varies. If I restart after about 30 seconds, the computer sometimes crashes again within minutes of boot up. If the computer sits powered off for 5 or 10 minutes, it usually runs for anywhere from several hours to a day before crashing again.

Remedies tried so far: All hardware tests show normal. Temperature tests show everything within normal ranges; in fact, crashes occur when temperatures are well below limits (using SpeedFan to monitor). Voltages are stable (at least up until the moment of the crash). I've swapped the positions of the RAM modules with no effect. All sleep/hibernate options have been disabled, including those for individual devices. The computer ran for almost 2 days in safe mode without incident (although there isn't much activity you can do in safe mode). The crashing occurs even when MSCONFIG is used for clean boots. The registry has been cleaned (no effect). All drivers and AMD Catalyst Control Center were updated (no effect). SFC returns no errors. Various recommended Microsoft patches have been installed (no effect). There are no viruses or malware. The computer is OEM OTS, with no esoteric hardware and no gaming hardware or software. I've run so many tests and tried so many things that I'm probably leaving some out.

Running OEM Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium on an unmodified Gateway desktop. AMD quad core processor, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB hard disk, ATI Radion graphics. All windows updates have been routinely installed.

Originally Posted by Huntan Peck

Hello all;

For the past several mornings, when clicking my mouse to wake my PC from sleep mode, my screen remains completely black. I can hear the PC start up, the fan running, etc. I can even hear the Windows log on sound when I punch in my password. All power lights are on, but the monitor refuses to display anything, not even a blinking cursor.

My keyboard then becomes unresponsive and I'm unable to shut my PC down using the power button. I've had to hard reboot several times by manually switching my surge protector off and on. After getting the expected message that Windows didn't shut down properly, my system then starts up as usual.

I have Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit). My processor is an AMD Athlon II X4 630 and I have 6 GB of RAM. Both my PC and monitor are brand new. I would greatly appreciate any advice. Thank you.

1. If the problem just started, something has changed on your computer. If you recently made any changes, try going back to its previous condition (eg, uninstall new software or roll back updates), and see if the problem persists. If you haven't made any recent changes, it could be a component failure. This issue doesn't sound like a typical malware infection.
2. Try disabling sleep mode/hibernation. It is known to be problematic. Short of that, try setting the individual sleep settings so the monitor never goes to sleep (the issue sounds like it could be with the video hardware or driver, a common sleep mode issue).

I had a similar Black CRT w/AMD and a new driver fixed it. Probably not yours, but the details are here:

Running Win7; CONSTANT SPORATIC TEMPORARY "BLACK SCREENS" with ext VGA | Windows Secrets Lounge