Black screen every Thursday, PC quit sleeping this past week.

I was just trying to track down this wake problem, and found this page:

Why is my computer waking up from a sleep state?

I THOUGHT that I'd been through this before, but tried again and found:



So I set the wireless keyboard and mouse NOT to be able to wake the PC, and lo and behold, it can sleep now!

I'm going to test it some more, but it just went to sleep FINALLY when I forced it, and went down to about 6 watts of power usage, and didn't wake until I pushed the case power button. Whoo hoo! :)

This MAY have been inhibited from working, until I got that chipset stuff worked out, I dunno.

Thanks SO MUCH Caledon Ken for your patience, persistence and absolute heroism with helping me with these problems, and at least guiding me so I could better find my solutions too! No one else stuck with me like this, and it's DEEPLY appreciated! :)

Now at least, this buys me a little time, to bring up that new PC and transfer over, so I can take a month or two, if need be! Thanks! :)

After this, I need some sleep myself. LOL! Thanks again!

This is Ground Hog Day all over again! BUT I finally identified the cause!

I have Home Edition and EVERY night after 8 PM, it "updates" my video driver to one that crashes my PC.

Sometimes restarting it, sometimes rendering it useless unless I shut the power off. This is like ground hog day because I have the Radeon 5670 and the driver that works perfectly is 15.2.1062.1004 dated 8-3-15. BUT these unstoppable updates ( Home Edition will NOT allow the user to stop the video driver from updating ) keep changing it to 15.201.1151.1008 dated 11-4-15. And it makes me crazy having to try to get it back to the one that works, while it keeps crashing my PC and home business.

Is there ANY way to get a message to the bug people at Microsoft and get them to allow a fix for this?

Caledon Ken said:

Hi MamaBear.

I've been away, in Texas.

You should be able to stop Window driver updates using this set of commands. I understand driver updates will be easier to stop in the Creator release (Available April 11, 2017), so you could say MS heard you.

In prep for this update I would note some of your critical driver levels as they seem to get updated with the upgrade. You likely won't be in the fisrt batches of people updated as you are on an older device. (May take a while before you actually see.)

Try these commands and see if they don't stop the updates.

Windows + R keys
Enter Sysdm.cpl
Click on Hardware tab
Click on Device Installation Settings
Click on No
A menu appears (first time) click Never Install driver software.
You may get a warning. Click the option that says I’ll take care of it (not exact words)

Ken

Ken, thanks, but I just went through almost 2 weeks of PC hell with this. It just kept rebooting and rebooting and screen freezing. I've tried everything. Apparently the Home Edition ( free upgrade last July ) is the only one that won't allow that to be changed. So last weekend, I finally had to shut down my part time home business for a few days, and unpack the newer refurbed Windows 8.1 PC and get it going, then start trying to get enough data transferred, to where I could do my business again - which was Tuesday.

I also ordered an Ethernet cable to speed transfers, instead of the wifi, but even that doesn't seem fast enough, when I just realized that I have 239GB of data on the old pC. ( some of it programs but a lot of it data )

So now I'm looking into a Thermaltake docking station ( see the thread I just posted ) as maybe a faster way to transfer the data, so I can throw the old PC in the trash and go on with my life, finally. The old machine appears to be having problems that are possibly with the old BIOS not being Windows 10 compatible, the chipset, which I tried to upgrade but it said FAILED to, and/or the old video card, or all the above. So I'm just going to move the data ASAP and toss the old PC in the trash. Unless I could reinstall the Win 7 on it, but even then, the chipset was messed with, so I don't even know if it's worth the trouble now.

Caledon Ken said:

Even in the Home version you can stop driver updates, you can't stop Window OS updates, well you can with some tricks. Set your wireless connection to "Metered" and all updates are stopped.

I'll look for your thread when I get a moment. Myself, I would buy a little external drive, say from Western Digital. Likely under a $100. Copy all you data on to it. Yes it will take some time, likely a couple of hours.

Then copy it back to new device. Once complete you now have a backup in a small form that you can place somewhere offsite.

As to your old PC the old drive is still usable, you may consider using it for Images. You could also delete all your personal files on it, once you know they are on new PC, then use something like CC Cleaner, free, to wipe free space.

When I truly throw a drive away I drill through the casing five or six times with a 1/4 drill where the platter is located. Use safety goggles. Then into the electronic bin at the waste site.

Thanks Ken.

Well I discovered last night that the Ethernet cable moves things a lot faster than I realized. I THINK I have all the critical data moved. One handy program from years ago, that I still use, is TaskPlus - a task manager. I copied that over directly but perhaps because the old system is Windows 10 and the new one is Windows 8.1, it runs but says unregistered on the new PC, and the alarms list tasks are missing.

As far as wiping the old drive, I was thinking of just installing Win 7 back on it - that should do it.

For mirroring, on the old one, I was using a Thermaltake BlacX HDD Docking Station ST0005U
but it has ESATA plugged into the old PC and only a USB 2 port. The new PC doesn't appear to have an ESATA port ( unless I used a card on the old one and it came out the back - don't recall now ) but has USB 3, so I'll get the newer one - the ST0005U-D, which has a USB 3 port.

I have at least 3 HD's for the old BlacX, and I always buy 7200 RPM, so they backup fast. I also subscribe to Carbonite.

Caledon Ken said:

Cool.

Your taskplus is likely a licensed product. (You paid something for it.)

Yes.

You may have to contact them to get current machine unsubscribed so you can enter key in new machine.

They're gone - out of business.

Failing that the big email systems have Tasks list although they may not have all the functionality of your current. I used Outlook 2013.

This is calendar task software, where you can put events on the calendar, and even set daily alarms.