sleep/hibernation problems....please help

[dana3lynn]

I have a emachines 2400 athlon running winxp home edition. The other night when I went to bed I shut down my computer using start>shut down. The next time I tried to turn it on it kept going into sleep mode. It has been doing this for 2 days now. It will not wake up unless I push in the power button. Sometimes when I turn it off and back on, all that is on is the orange led light and nothing around the power button. Other times it will boot up and show the splash screen, let me select my name on windows sign in and start loading drivers but then goes into sleep mode. I was able to keep it running long enough today which was a miracle to do a restore from CD Restore. Right after it finish restoring drive C it went to sleep. I was able to go to power management settings and select never do crap lol and also no screen saver. any ideas here?????

PS also does the same thing in safe mode

[jmtjet]

The fact it's doing it in safe mode points to a possible hardware problem. Possibly heat related. If you can remove the side cover you can observe the fans on boot, especially the CPU fan. Are they all running? If the CPU fan is not running heat will build quickly around the CPU chip resulting in a shutdown or a fried CPU. Another thing to check would be the power supply. You should be able to feel warm air being exhausted from the back of the computer through the power supply if the fans are running. But even if the fans in the power supply are running it still could be still getting ready to fail. Hope this helps.

[dana3lynn]

Thank you so much for a reply. I took the cover off and both fans are running. It is weirf because when it does the sleep thing the light on the monitor goes orange , the power light around the power button is not green or orange...just nothing but the led light for the hard drive stays orange. Could this indicate the hard drive???? I actually got it running the other day and it stayed on and ran normal for hours until I went to sleep. If it is the power supply is there a certain watt you would recommend???

[jdc2000]

Check the power supply manufacturer. If it is a Bestec, I suggest you replace it immediately, before it fails completely. Bestec power supplies usually take out the motherboard when they fail.

[SuperSparks]

If you have, or can borrow, a multimeter, here's how to test a power supply:

Testing PSU voltages

Or alternatively you can buy a proper PSU tester, they don't cost much:

PSU Tester

ATX12V PSU Tester