Sleep fails - BSOD putting computer to sleep [Solved]

[StandbySlouch]

Dear experts,

I have a problem with my standby mode (S3) on my Asus UX51VZ notebook. Sometimes the S3 fails in a very annoying way: First, the screen turns black as usual but instead of suspending (into S3), the fans begin to work at 100 % and it just wont suspend. Even after hours, the screen is black, fans at 100 % and cpu is really hot (-> endless loop?) and it does not respond to any key. The only escape is to kill it by pressing and holding the power button, which also means that the state (e.g. open documents) will be lost. This happens only sometimes (maybe 1/10) and it began just a few weeks ago (I own the notebook since 1 year). Unfortunately, I am not able to reproduce this glitch willfully - it always happens when it should absolutely not. I don't know in which state the PC must be so that the glitch occurs but it seems that it is more likely to occur when there are more open programs.

I investigated in the internet a lot and found Sleeper, hoping that it will give me some information what the cause could be. I set a cycle and indeed the glitch occured but unfortunately, the only thing the log file told me is a warning as the sleep time of that cycle was too long. Well since that does not help me, I put my last hope in you guys: Anybody has an idea what could cause this problem or how I could get an useful error log?

Asus UX51VZ (bios and all drivers up to date)
Windows 8.1 (winupdate up to date)
No new drivers or software installed in past few weeks.

Thanks!

[orioon]

From experience I can tell that most of the time GPU drivers are responsible for this behaviour.
Especially with Nvidia drivers this occured quite often to me.

I would give different driver versions a try.
Did you try the one from the vendor? These are usually better tested than the ones provided by Nvidia directly or through Windows Update for such scenarios.

You could also try to disable WLAN before going to sleep, that would help to rule out most possible driver issues without having to change the driver.

Are you using a docking station or something like that?

TurboBoost can be causing such issues, too.

[David (PassMark)]

If the problem started just a couple of weeks ago and it was working OK before that, then have a think about what new software / hardware was installed around that time.

Maybe you can use a restore point to roll back to where you were 3 weeks back?

[StandbySlouch]

Hi,

Thanks for your replies!

I already tried:
x different gpu driver versions (oem)
x disabling wifi
x ram memtest

Problem still persists.

Btw, there is no dockingstation, no turboboost, no restore point and i have no new hard/software installed around when the problem occured for the first time.

But what I found out with the tool "BlueScreenView", is that every time the problem occurs, a driver_irql_not_less_or_equal bluescreen is thrown obviously, though the screen actually does not turn into a bluescreen. See detailed information attached.

Any new suggestions for resolving this problem?

Thanks again!

Cheers

[David (PassMark)]

So this is a pretty specific crash in the core of the operating system.

If you Google for,
driver_irql_not_less_or_equal ntoskrnl.exe+153fa0

There are a bunch of results. I suggest you work through them and see if any of the solutions apply to your case.

Our Sleeper software won't fix the problem as these driver_irql problems are almost always a results of bugs in the device driver software. There are a few people also blaming anti-virus software in this case as well (but they also use device drivers for low level access to the machine).

[StandbySlouch]

Hi,
Just if anybody comes here struggling with the same problem as me: Finally I found the cause of the bluescreens when turning into standby:
Indeed, the firewall of the software "Avira Internet Security" caused the bluescreens. Avira told me that this product may not be fully compatible with Win8. I think this is nonsense, because I have also had this problem when using Win7. After deinstallation of Internet Security and an upgrade to "Avira Antivirus Pro" (which uses the Windows Firewall from now on) 3 months ago, the problem did never every occur again since then.
Thanks for your support guys.
Cheers

[lyesqiz]

Hi,
Just if anybody comes here struggling with the same problem as me: Finally I found the cause of the bluescreens when turning into standby:
Indeed, the firewall of the software "Avira Internet Security" caused the bluescreens. Avira told me that this product may not be fully compatible with Win8 and Mac OS X 11.0. I think this is nonsense, because I have also had this problem when using Win7. After deinstallation of Internet Security and an upgrade to "Avira Antivirus Pro" (which uses the Windows Firewall from now on) 3 months ago, the problem did never every occur again since then.
Thanks for your support guys.
Cheers

thx for the timely suggestion to get my problem solved.

[amadat]

Hi,
Just if anybody comes here struggling with the same problem as me: Finally I found the cause of the bluescreens when turning into standby:
Indeed, the firewall of the software "Avira Internet Security" caused the bluescreens. Avira told me that this product may not be fully compatible with Win8. I think this is nonsense, because I have also had this problem when using Mac. After deinstallation of Internet Security and an upgrade to "Avira Antivirus Pro" (which uses the Windows Firewall from now on) 3 months ago, the problem did never every occur again since then.
Thanks for your support guys.
Cheers

i also have this problem in win 8...