The subject of Windows 7 and sleep mode has generated a lot of chatter since the RC was released. There have been many problems cited, namely not being able to wake the computer up, systems not going to sleep properly, and computers waking themselves up randomly.
Sleep mode keeps your session in memory, but puts the computer in a state of low power consumptions until the computer is woken up, at which point work can quickly be resumed. There are a few things you need to check if you are having any kind of sleep problems with Windows 7.
Firstly you need to make sure all your drivers are up to date, especially for your graphics and motherboard. There have been links made to problems with incompatible BIOSes, but as long as S3 Suspend Mode is supported, Windows 7 should be able to sleep and wake properly.
If everything is up-to-date, run an Energy Report on the computer to see what it says. This is a good way to see if your components can enter sleep or suspend mode or not.
To do this, open a CMD window and type powercfg –energy. This will produce an HTML report analyzing the power capabilities of your machine. If your computer isn’t sleeping properly, this report may give you an indication as to why. Components that can’t enter a low power mode appear in pink. They may not be the problem though, as the motherboard can switch off USB devices without needing input from Windows. If there is anything unusual there, investigate it further.
