Question PC display & Sleep/Wake problems ?

[MikeA01730]

Hi,

I have an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 tower model Y1B39AV I bought in 2017. Recently it started behaving strangely in several ways.

Today I woke my sleeping PC and saw that the display was behaving bizarrely. It was continuously cycling a through a pattern where on the left and right sides of the display it looked like vertical blinds were opening and closing revealing the portion of the desktop from the other side. It took 4 to 7 seconds per cycle. It's impossible to describe adequately but you can see photos here: Screens. I hide my task bar so not seeing that is normal. Halfway through I clicked on the desktop so the image changed from the login screen to my desktop. Once the desktop displayed the pointer moved as it should and the task bar popped up but clicking had no effect on anything. I finally rebooted by tapping the power switch. This problem is not 100% new. Since sometime last year I've occasionally seen the same effect. It looked like this but it's only persisted for a fraction of a cycle and then didn't recur for several days to a week.

In Oct 2022 I replaced the PSU with the HP replacement to try and fix a different problem: at boot time the screen would start out black. Sometimes it would start working part way through the boot process and occasionally the screen would never come on. I would have liked to upgrade the PSU so I could buy a more powerful display card but the only one that will fit is the HP-unique 250 W PSU. After replacing the PSU the problem stopped. Two months ago I replaced my old display card with a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (best I could find that would work with the 250 W PSU) because I wanted to speed up my DxO PhotoLab raw processing. I got a huge speed increase and was very happy with the result. Other than that there have been no recent hardware or software changes.

Just recently I've seen an occasional problem where when I wake from sleep there's a long delay before the display changes at all. I see the blank screen, then HP Sure Start, then an OS boot selection screen, then a blank screen again, then the login screen, then the unresponsive desktop with the background only, then the regular desktop unresponsive, and finally the desktop becomes responsive. The whole thing can take 5 to 10 min. with long wait times between each of these steps. This has happened maybe 5 times in as many months.

I have no idea how to diagnose these problems but I'm concerned things could go downhill from here. This is my main PC and I need it to work reliably. Any ideas on how to proceed?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Misgar]

What Operating System are you running.

Are you booting up from hard disk or SSD.

What processor is installed? How much RAM?

A 250W PSU should cope with the 75W power draw from a 1050Ti, but if you have the 91W i7-7700K it might be a bit close to the limit.

Is there any specific reason why you allow the system to enter sleep mode, instead of shutting it down completely, especially if it can take 10 minutes to recover sometimes.

A computer should boot up into Windows (cold start not sleep) from hard disk in less than 5 minutes. From SSD in less than 3 minutes. Some devices have trouble recovering from deep sleep.

Have you checked the boot drive for errors.

Have you checked the System log in Event Viewer (if running Windows).

Have you checked for malware/virus infections.

Have you tested the computer with a different GPU or the on-board graphics adapter?

Have you tested RAM with MemTest86?

https://www.memtest86.com/

 

[MikeA01730]

Hi Misgar,

I'm running Windows 10 Professional 64 bit 10.0.19045.3086.

I boot from a SanDisk 256 GB SSD. I ran CrystalDiskInfo for the C: drive and copied the screenshot into the DropBox folder I linked to above for the other images. It looks fine but I'm not familiar with the screen so I'm not sure.

The CPU is an Intel Core i5-6500 3.20 GHZ with 16 GB of DDR4-2400 RAM.

I've always used sleep. I use the computer on and off throughout the day, it goes to sleep when I'm not using it, and typically it wakes within 15 sec. Up to now that's worked fine for me and I had no reason to explore alternatives.

Typically when I boot the desktop displays and most of the background applications are up and running within 1 min.

Re the System Log, any time I've looked at it for a specific purpose I've seen loads of entries that I didn't understand. It looks like that now. I have no idea what entries I should be looking for that would indicate a problem but I didn't see anything that caught my attention.

I scanned for malware with ESET and found no problems.

I created a Memtest86 USB drive but couldn't boot from it. All my SSDs and HDDs were listed, as were my SD and CF card readers, and PXE for both V4 and V6 IP. There was one choice for USB drives but when I selected it nothing happened even though I tried two different ports. Instead I ran the BIOS System Test and Fast Memory Test and found no errors.

The only thing you mentioned that I didn't do is to run without the display card. I didn't bother because the symptoms started before I replaced the card but I can do that if you think it's worthwhile.

Mike

 

[Misgar]

Interpreting Windows Event Viewer System logs is a bit if a black art but there are programs which can help, although I've never used them. I normally just look at the red events.

There are two versions of MemTest. One boots up on UEFI systems. The other boots up on older CSM systems. With a system of your vintage try MemTest86 instead of MemTest86+. I hope I've got it the right way round.

If there's nothing wrong with your hardware (which we haven't ruled out yet) it might be a good idea to install a fresh version of Windows on a new SSD. The problem might be OS or software related.

SSDs can go bad, as can RAM and other hardware. Windows can go bad too. Troubleshooting is a process of elimination.

When I install a new copy of Windows on a desktop PC, I disable all power saving, hibernation and sleep modes for hard disks, video monitors, USB hubs, Ethernet chipsets, etc. If want to save power I shut down Windows.

 

[MikeA01730]

Hi Misgar,

Re the Event Viewer I see nothing in red, and nothing that suggests to me an issue that might be related to my problems.

My system has UEFI with no CSM capability that I'm aware of and it appears to me that I created the correct MemTest86 USB drive. Instead of trying to get MemTest86 to work I ran the UEFI diagnostics. The System Extensive Test ran for 1 hr. 39 min., the Extensive Memory Test ran for 4 hr. 38 min., and the Extensive Hard Drive test ran for C: took 22 min.. No errors were found. I didn't bother with tests like the mouse or audio card which seem irrelevant.

Re reinstalling Windows, I'm not about to take that on now and then perhaps find that it has no effect. I understand it could be useful but in the past it's taken a lot of my time to get everything set up and working properly from scratch and for me the possible benefit doesn't justify the effort right now. If things get bad enough I might buy a new PC so I only need to reinstall everything once. This system is 6 yrs. old next month and even though it seems to have adequate power for now replacing it wouldn't be unreasonable.

If you do have any other ideas for diagnosing this problem please let me know.

Otherwise I'll keep using this machine and if these problems get worse I'll re-evaluate how to move forward.

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Misgar]

I frequently hold off reinstalling Windows on a troublesome computer because I refuse to believe it's beyond my ability to repair.

Eventually I bite the bullet, fit a new drive and perform a clean install. On all but but the oldest computers with sluggish hard disks, it takes me less than 30 minutes to install Windows up to the initial Desktop screen.

Afterchecking to see if Windows has missed any drivers, I run a series of stability tests to see if the problem remains. If the basic OS is stable, I install programs one at a time and test again. If the trouble isn't fixed with the new OS, I still have the old drive, with all my programs and data intact. At that point I start changing hardware.

A few of my legacy systems are still on the original build of Windows (with regular monthly security updates), but many of the computers are now on their second or third build of Windows. A complete OS/program rebuild can be normally be achieved in less than 5 hours.

If your computer has only started to go wrong after 6 years, it's had a productive life.

 

[MikeA01730]

Thanks. I might give that a try if things get worse. I agree 6 yrs. is a good life and will also consider buying a new machine.