Windows 98SE Randomly Going to Sleep

[nd172934]

Hi forum,

Shortly after resolving the previous post I'd made about Nvidia driver issues, I began to experience the very odd issue of windows randomly going to sleep. Such behavior includes:

• System goes to sleep anywhere from as soon as the windows boot screen is cleared to a couple minutes after bootup (even on a fresh, unmodified install)
• When system wakes up, sometimes it's fine, sometimes it no longer outputs a display, and sometimes the system freezes
• Issue does not happen in safe mode

Having tried to diagnose the issue for about 2-3 weeks now, I have tried the following (all of which has failed to resolve the issue):

• Reinstalling with ACPI disabled
• Reinstalling with ACPI enabled
• Replacing GPU thermal pads & thermal paste
• Replacing CPU thermal paste
• Removing all PCI cards, as well as removing only one at a time
• Unplugging all non-essential power draws (fans, external drives)
• Disabling power management (APM) in BIOS
• Enabling only S1 or S3 sleep one at a time
• Switching memory configuration and # of sticks (i.e. testing system with only one stick of memory in, switching memory slots occupied)
• Disabling all devices in BIOS other than hard drive and AGP slot
• Uninstalling and reinstalling "System" drivers
• Disabling sleep in Power Management
• Disabling ACPI devices in device manager one at a time (ACPI Sleep Button, etc.)
• Performing step-by-step configuration bootup, disabling all drivers and features not essential to startup
• Installing official chipset drivers known to work with 9x

Other than safe mode, this is the one step-by-step configuration that always resolves the sleep issue:

 

Process the system registry? [Y]

Create a startup log file (BOOTLOG.TXT)? [Y]

Process your startup device drivers (CONFIG.SYS)? [Y]

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEN.SYS ? [Y]

DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\DBLBUFF.SYS ? [Y]

DEVICEHIGH=C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS ? [Y]

Load the Windows graphical user inferface? [Y]

Load all Windows drivers? [N]

 

Interestingly enough, I had a similar issue of the system randomly sleeping on my Windows 2000 install (an install on a separate SATA drive). After wiping the drive and a clean install (with no bios settings changed), it no longer experiences the sleep issue. On this working install, I have ran PCMark04 and 3DMark03 to see if the sleep issue is thermal related, but GPU-Z and HWMonitor returned normal values, as in there were no high temperature readings that would suggest Windows 98 is sleeping due to heat issues. I have even run the same version of HWMonitor on 98, and it also did not return high thermal readings.

I would like to note that this issue began after installing the drivers to my ethernet card and removing a wireless network card who's drivers never loaded correctly. But correlation does not equal causation.......

If anyone could offer any advice, I would greatly appreciate it. Fixing this issue has taking up more or less my entire free time these last couple of weeks. I also have limited disposable income, so I don't have the flexibility to just buy new components and see if the issue goes away.

System specs:

AMD Athlon 4000+

Asus A8V-X

Geforce 6800 GT AGP

1GB Corsair DDR400 RAM

40GB IDE Samsung Spinpoint Hard Drive (for Windows 98)

160GB SATA Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive (for Windows 2000)

Seasonic S12II 650W Power Supply

 

Edited October 1, 2021 by nd172934
Add further information to working config

[RainyShadow]

Could you disconnect the power button after turning on the PC and see if it still goes to sleep?

Also, examine the board for faulty capacitors, dust piles, etc.

[nd172934]

I'll try those two things when I have free time again, but if it were one of those two things I think the sleep issue would show up in Windows 2000 as well?

To be fair, I imagine 98 would be more sensitive to stuff like seing as it gets upset much more easily.

[RainyShadow]

2 hours ago, nd172934 said:

I'll try those two things when I have free time again, but if it were one of those two things I think the sleep issue would show up in Windows 2000 as well?

 

4 hours ago, nd172934 said:

Interestingly enough, I had a similar issue of the system randomly sleeping on my Windows 2000 install (an install on a separate SATA drive).

Otherwise i would have first suggested to try another OS...

[jumper]

> Load all Windows drivers? [N]

Uninstall all new drivers in reverse order going back several weeks before you noticed the problem. Alternately, restore a working registry.

 

[nd172934]

9 hours ago, jumper said:

> Load all Windows drivers? [N]

Uninstall all new drivers in reverse order going back several weeks before you noticed the problem. Alternately, restore a working registry.

 

This was done on a fresh windows install as well where no drivers had been installed and the sleep issue still occurs

[jumper]

Nice to know, but not the same. Does declining load of all drivers still work?

Remove the new NIC or disable it in BIOS. Also disable Wake on LAN. A device doing that might also try to sleep on no lan activity.

 

[Goodmaneuver]

First it depends on what you mean by sleep. Sleep means that the machine can be woken up by pressing the appropriate key board key for example which can be set up in BIOS.

On 10/1/2021 at 5:18 PM, nd172934 said:

Other than safe mode, this is the one step-by-step configuration that always resolves the sleep issue:

Those startup settings really just mimic safe mode as far as I know. Safe mode does not load the hardware software drivers and runs hardware off BIOS. Most problems occur when a monitor is installed on a Standard PCI graphics adapter driver then the nVidia drivers are installed afterwards. First install a Standard PCI graphics adapter and then reboot. When system reboots do not allow a monitor to be installed, this is the important part. Now install the nVidia driver and then reboot. If your monitor goes blank or says "not supported" on reboot, go into safe mode and right click properties and choose the display settings of 640x480 @ 4bit color. This is the same as safe mode. Then when rebooted do not allow the monitor to be installed just yet, : - important. Change settings to 256 bit color and 800x600 or what you want, there will not be many choices. It will ask for a reboot most likely, so reboot. The nVidia driver after 256 color is running it will run the nVidia other software and now it is safe to the install the monitor driver. You may wait till 32 bit color is running first though then reboot and allow the monitor installation.

[nd172934]

Update (10/1/21):

So I tried installing Windows ME to see if the sleep issue resolved. It did not at first after a few reboots, but I then unplugged the front panel headers.

(Also, at this point, after the computer went to sleep, powering up the computer did not output video and would require a restart.)

After unplugging the headers, I got a prompt that said something to the likes of "Your computer has not resumed from hibernation several times. Do you want to disable hibernation mode?"

After clicking yes at this prompt, the sleep issue went away. I have since performed a clean install of 98SE, replugged in the headers, and installed all the drivers I need and a couple games, and the issue has gone away.

I don't know the cause of the issue, but unplugging the front panel headers, rebooting, and then replugging in the headers solved the issue. Strangely, in ME or 98SE, hibernation was never a setting in the power menu (only shut down, reboot, sleep were present). If the issue comes up again, I will post another update.

Thanks for those who posted for the advice!

Edited October 3, 2021 by nd172934
Further clarification of resolution

[pangoomis]

Have you tried updating the motherboards BIOS to the latest version?

Try using the PC outside the case for some time to see if the issue can (hopefully not) occur even without the front panel headers being involved.

[Goodmaneuver]

On 10/3/2021 at 3:05 PM, nd172934 said:

powering up the computer did not output video and would require a restart.

Often the HDD controller hardware is marginal and not working properly : - what ever the reason. If what you describe happens try booting up with logging (BootLog.txt). It works for me.