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Windows Operating Systems Software IT

Prescription Meds For Vista Sleep Disorder 144

Posted by kdawson from the you-will-sleep-now-and-when-you-wake dept.
Arnold O'Connor writes "NeoSmart Technologies has compiled a list of hotfixes and patches provided by Microsoft for Windows Vista that address a large number of issues related to waking/resuming a Vista PC (both x86 and x64) from sleep or hibernation. Sleep-related disorders have plagued Vista since its release, though they were not present in earlier betas. Most of these fixes are due to be included in Windows Vista SP1 — codenamed Fiji."
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Prescription Meds For Vista Sleep Disorder More

Prescription Meds For Vista Sleep Disorder

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  • Ah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday March 11, 2007 @07:38AM (#18306910)
    And you thought saying "Windoze" was a stale joke...

    • Yes! (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by twitter ( 104583 )

      Zombie [slashdot.org] has new life too. These issues will never go away, will they?

      • Not while people are using computers, no.

        In other words, nice try at a pretence that the article you linked to labels Vista machines as being part of botnets - in fact, the article itself was up on Slashdot before Vista was even released.

        Lies, lies, and more lies. Tragic, really.

  • Problems? (Score:1, Informative)

    by TomOfWight ( 927955 )
    I've been using Vista on 3 very different pcs for quite some time now, a desktop, a new laptop and an 18 month old laptop, and I've yet to have any problems with putting any of them into sleep mode and then waking them up again. Now I may have been exceptionally lucky, but I doubt it. Vista FUD is already getting old.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sirf ( 799191 )
      I've never been in a car accident and neither have any of my friends as far as I know, but I still don't doubt their existence. Requiring seat belts is pure FUD.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dreamchaser ( 49529 )
        Bad analogy. A better one would be a comparison to car recalls. There are two pending for mine but I haven't had the problem (they are minor ones, nothing saftey related)so I keep putting it off. That doesn't mean the design problem doesn't exist; just that it hasn't affected me.

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by jrockway ( 229604 )
          > doesn't mean the design problem doesn't exist; just that it hasn't affected me.

          Hey, I think I see you outside -- in a body bag.
          • I guess you missed the part about them not being safety related. One is for the seat heater, the other the rear door lock, and neither problem is present in my car. Nice try, better luck next time!

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Phisbut ( 761268 )

              I guess you missed the part about them not being safety related. One is for the seat heater, the other the rear door lock, and neither problem is present in my car. Nice try, better luck next time!

              And when your seat heater malfunctions and the seat catches fire, and then you can't leave the car because the rear door lock won't open... what will you do then?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TomOfWight ( 927955 )
        I'm not doubting the existence of a problem, I'm doubting its prevalence.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mangu ( 126918 )

          I'm not doubting the existence of a problem, I'm doubting its prevalence.

          Based on how many samples? If a smoker lives to his nineties, and some of them do, will that prove there are no links between smoking and cancer?

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by osu-neko ( 2604 )
            Given that I'm the center of the universe, anything that isn't obvious from my personal experience... well, I'll allow that it might exist, but it obviously can't be very prevalent. ;)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by eli pabst ( 948845 )
      How is it FUD if Microsoft is issuing patches for it?

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by TomOfWight ( 927955 )
        The implication is that it's a far more widespread problem than it is.

        • Implication? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by twitter ( 104583 )

          The implication is that it's a far more widespread problem than it is.

          I don't know why anyone would think a problem would be common in a monoculture OS, do you?

          You're right about it not being widespread. Vista's not selling. How's that for FUD?

          There's a massive conspiracy to not purchase Vista! It's kind of like the one I launched against SCO, the infamous Distributed Lack of Purchasing (DLoP) attack. It's all the FUDster's fault. It has nothing to do with the thing taking six years to get here a

          • I said:

            There's a massive conspiracy to not purchase Vista! It's kind of like the one I launched against SCO, the infamous Distributed Lack of Purchasing (DLoP) attack. It's all the FUDster's fault.

            and SCO agreed! [slashdot.org]. How pathetic.

        • Well, people evaluate the likelihood of things based on their experience, and you haven't seen this happen.
          I, for one, haven't seen a *working* Vista computer yet, so I naturally have a different take on things.

          Also, if I were to guess, laptops are more likely to have trouble with hibernate than desktops, although one of the Vista PCs I helped repair (as much as possible, at least) was certainly having some odd issue with shutting down. In fact, it seemed like the system didn't want to do a proper shutdown

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )
        Well if you were running Vista, I dare say right now, you would have a certain measure of fear in using sleep, as a result of the uncertainty of your machine resuming and being in doubt as to whether unsaved open documents would be available upon your return, there you go, FUD, is just the natural of using any Windows (P)OS, made even worse if you read the warranty ;-))).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      I've been using Vista on 3 very different pcs for quite some time now, a desktop, a new laptop and an 18 month old laptop, and I've yet to have any problems with putting any of them into sleep mode and then waking them up again. Now I may have been exceptionally lucky, but I doubt it. Vista FUD is already getting old.

      This is the difference between anecdotal evidence and sampling all your customers. Noone is claiming Vista's sleep modes don't work anywhere, in fact, you can bet they were tested and confirmed

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Wingsy ( 761354 )
        "...so it's normal to find hardware not working fine with it"

        Couldn't help but to comment on this.

        That one sentence is a prime example of a major difference between Windows and Mac users. It is seldom one finds a Mac user who expects stuff not to work properly, whereas I see many Windows users who have this same expectation of performance. I don't understand how one can just casually expect their OS to not work.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
          How about you reread the post you replied to, where I addressed how Apple can pull this off (and why it's a non-achievement).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ucklak ( 755284 )
      First of all, I listen to FUD but never really pay attention to it.
      Secondly, I hold the Mac and it's awake from sleep mode in less than 2 seconds as the pinnacle of what it should be.
      Third, I've read that Vista does this in it's RTM version.
      Fourth, It's a blatant lie from Microsoft or whatever review junket that spewed the lie as I've had the displeasure of having to turn off the sleep function on an 2 week old Dell as 3 and a half minutes is way too long to awake from sleep.

      I already know Microsoft is crap
      • I used to run Linux on my laptop (an IBM T40). When every distro I tried (Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo) had a kernel panic upon resuming from sleep, I gave up. From everything I read about this problem, power management is pretty delicate. Even if it works on one person's hardware it might have problems on a nearly identical computer. Apple has a huge advantage over Microsoft and the Linux community in that their testing can cover every hardware configuration that consumers can buy.

        As for your problem with a slow
    • Well.... On 3 out of 4 desktop systems I've tried, power management, especially standby, is horribly broken. Standby worked fine under XP on all 4 systems.
    • My laptop has intermittent problems with going to sleep and then re-enabling the bluetooth card on wake-up. I suspect the bluetooth drivers. But it seems to be getting worse as time goes bye.
    • Vista FUD is already getting old.

      I can confirm this is not FUD and yes, you have been somewhat lucky. Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad R5x and T6x both exhibit problems with Vista sleep disorders. Even with the latest patches and bios updates the OS is very unstable after wake up from hibernation or sleep.

      Lenovo has hinted that further Microsoft updates will be needed to Vista to make sleep/hibernation fully usable again.

      I'm interested to know what kind of hardware are you using?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rycross ( 836649 )
      My experience is that it works properly and quickly (2-3 seconds to come out of sleep). Another drop in the anecdote bucket.

  • How widespread? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Marbleless ( 640965 ) on Sunday March 11, 2007 @07:55AM (#18306988)
    I'd be interested to know how widespread these sleeping disorders are.

    Our next generation of software is being tested under Vista and we have a number of dedicated test machines and dual boot development machines of different vintages. None of them have any problems at all with suspend or hibernate.

    Just because there is a cure it doesn't mean that the problem affects everybody ... although I have had hypochondriac computers in the past ;)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by T.E.D. ( 34228 )
      I don't know if this is one of the known "sleeping disorders", but the second monitor of my Vista rig doesn't like to come back from sleep. Both monitors are identical and were even bought at the same time. When the system wakes, the left monitor shows half my desktop just like normal, but the right stays black.

      I found I can fix it fairly easily by "testing out" a new desktop resolution. When it switches resolution, the other screen comes back. I then tell it I don't want the new resolution, and everything

  • When will they learn. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Sunday March 11, 2007 @07:56AM (#18306996)
    When will they learn that Microsoft has a very bad Beta Testing Routine.

    First they have people pay them to be Beta Testers (for the privilege of being able to use the OS before the general public, and being those jerks who put 3 years of MS Vista experience on their resume). This doesn't attract people who want to thoroughly test the product, this only attracts people who think it is still the 1990s and wants to inflate their resume. So if they did report any bugs or problems it was probably for more minor things or the most major things. Sleep Problems are kinda in the middle annoying but not enough to put a bug report on.

    Second poor response from my when bug testers do report a bug. Either they state that it isn't important or the conditions to get it are to off. In contrast I remember putting a bug in for Mozilla years back for an obscure problem on sizing the app across multiple displays of different resolutions. They weren't able to fix it quickly but they kept track of it until it was fixed.

    Third Beta Testing is not used as much for Bug Testing but for product evaluation. It is used to see if the product is liked by the general population not as a method of fixing problems. This creates the problem 2 ways because Microsoft Beta Testers are of the following.
    1. Love MS so much that they like everything that it does no matter how crappy it is, or make excuses for it problems (Don't get me wrong there are these type of people for every OS)

    2. Wants to keep their Resume up to spec to keep in demand of stupid employers so they can have 3 years of Vista Experience. They don't want to report bugs or difficult to use problems because it gives them the advantage over people who just started using production Vista.

    3. College Students/Professors mostly because they have extra time during the day to research these things. This group is most likely to report problems and give feedback. But that is only one segment of of the user base. And most college students and professors don't use the sleep options as much because they are on Campus which pays their electricity bills.
    • From MS's point of view anyway. Just remember what MS is trying to achieve. They are not after perfection, they are just after having something that is good enough to make a sale. It does not have to work 100%.

      MS had promised Vista in 2006 and many companies had put Vista buying in their 2006 budgets. Thus, MS had to ship something for these companies to buy in 2006. From the perspective of the customer companies, keeping the budget on track is far more of a deal than a few sleep problems. MS just had to sh

      • From MS's point of view anyway. Just remember what MS is trying to achieve. They are not after perfection, they are just after having something that is good enough to make a sale. It does not have to work 100%.

        Any serious software project cannot achieve 100% perfection. There's simply always another feature to add or a bug to fix. It's even more true for products like Windows which are so exceedingly complex that even small changes can be destabilizing. At a certain point, you have to choose keeping
        • True. But it is hard to believe that all the talent in MS could spend $5bn and come up with so little. It must be hard for the shareholders to think that Vista is a $5bn improvement to XP.

          The biggest sale has to be to the shareholders not the customers.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Bin ( 31121 )
            Shareholders don't care what MS does, as long as they (the shareholder) keep making money.

            Bryn

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by drsmithy ( 35869 )

            True. But it is hard to believe that all the talent in MS could spend $5bn and come up with so little.

            Vista is easily the biggest update to Windows since Windows 3.0 -> Windows 95. It's on the order of Apple's transformation of NeXTSTEP into OS X 10.2 (and took about the same amount of time). Just how much more "stuff" were you expecting ?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )

          It's even more true for products like Windows which are so exceedingly complex that even small changes can be destabilizing

          It's a sad statement of affairs that the above is a serious and earnest comment about a few applications, a kernel and the API's to develop applications. If you step back and look at it as a system it really does not need to be exceedingly complex, and even with all the extra complexity from flawed legacy support there are engineering projects of far greater complexity which do not ma

    • Fiji is an end-all fix to every problem anyone might have. Just keep the dream of Fiji alive and it will blur out the dull Vista experience, and somehow in the process make it bearable. Just as it did for Truman in The Truman Show.

    • those jerks who put 3 years of MS Vista experience on their resume
      Instead, they should leave it off?

  • Vista And The Hype (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Sukhbir ( 961063 )
    Frankly speaking I still can't understand the hype behind Vista. I mean its OK. Nothing out of this world and definitely not WOW.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by balthan ( 130165 )
      Nothing out of this world and definitely not WOW.

      You need the 64-bit version for that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by benzapp ( 464105 )
      Frankly, I can't understand why any blithering idiot moderated you post "Insightful" when it is not only entirely off topic, but completely inane. Please, if you are going to waste the time to post something, try to use at least 10 multi-syllable words.
  • I was planning on updating once stories on major vista issues had subsided to an "XP" level. Any time soon?
  • Maybe it's just me, but I'd think that I didn't do enough testing on a product that already has a codename for it's SP1 within a few months of its release.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's just silly to call a service packs like Fiji, maybe better Somalia or Iraq

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mqudsi ( 1074334 )
      Actually.... It was codenamed even before Vista went RTM! Microsoft made the official statement a while afterwards, but within Microsoft and in the beta newsgroups, Fiji (Vista SP1/R2) was declared long before Vista hit build 6000.
      • Well to me that would make it doubly obvious that I needed to do more testing before I went Gold.
      • Of course it was. Microsoft has released SPs for all of their large pieces of software in recent history. It would be completely stupid to pretend that one wasn't going to come out for Vista. Hence, the planning. I don't think most slashdot readers understand how difficult it is to stabilize such a large, complex piece of software like Windows. It's just not possible to hold a release until "all the bugs are fixed" if you ever want it to be released.
  • While I can't say for sure how bad Windows Vista's sleep mode resuming is, I can say that standby issues aren't new [microsoft.com].
    • Pointing a link to the confusion^Wknowledgebase is not a very good way to argue any particular issue that afflicts Windoze users. Microsoft, despite their stranglehold on the market and their influence on hardware design, still has to play the hand they're dealt by the hardware vendors.

      And frankly, in this case, I would not be surprised to learn that Microsoft (as a key player in the development of ACPI) shot themselves in the foot by allowing, or maybe even encouraging, the atrocious complexity behind ACPI
  • ...If Microsoft has issued patches for these issues? I mean, dozens of knowledgebase entries, several hotfixes, and a SP1 on the way. Think about it, if it was FUD, would MS further engage in spreading the propaganda? It's real and MS obviously knows it - and hopefully they will fully address the issue too, because it's an important one, esp. with all the "green talk" that's going around.

  • 1995 called (Score:5, Funny)

    by eneville ( 745111 ) on Sunday March 11, 2007 @09:19AM (#18307364) Homepage
    ... and they want their PNP problems back
  • "Most of these fixes are due to be included in Windows Vista SP1 -- codenamed Fiji."

    What are your sources that Fiji is the codename of Vista SP1 anyway? For what we know, Microsoft confirmed neither of those.
    • oh lets see fi you ask the oracle of the penguins you get
      Results 1 - 100 of about 9,100 for "windows vista sp1" fiji. (0.31 seconds)
      and if you hit the first link you get this http://vistasp1.net/images/header.jpg [vistasp1.net] at the tops which states
      Windows Vista SP1 codenamed Fiji preview and information center
      so i would think that Fiji = windows vista sp1 is quite probable

  • When will they fix the DRM bug? (Score:4, Funny)

    by GuyverDH ( 232921 ) on Sunday March 11, 2007 @09:43AM (#18307504)
    ie - create the new DRM free Vista - they could call it the "Vista PUDRMFE" - Vista Penultimate Digital Rights Management Free Edition

    Of course, they'll probably claim they can't take out the DRM because it's a crucial part of the operating system.

    Hmmm - wonder how ReactOS is doing lately....
    • ReactOS 0.3.1 has been "scheduled to be released within a week" for months now. Development is apparently still progressing; maybe they're just not concentrating on making a release.

      Either way, it's unfortunately still a very long way off.

    • ie - create the new DRM free Vista - they could call it the "Vista PUDRMFE" - Vista Penultimate Digital Rights Management Free Edition

      I think you mean Windows Vista PE (pirated edition).
      It'll be available soon for download from an online [isohunt.com] distributor [thepiratebay.org] near you!

      • Meh - no thanks. While I abhor the idea of donating (I hate to call it purchasing, as anything MS makes is never worth what they charge, so I have to think of it as a donation) any more money to MS, I will never do that.

  • Haha (Score:1)

    by boxxa ( 925862 )
    I remember seeing a presentation about Vista and its benefits before its release and the guy stated "Vista no longer has the sleep/suspend problems that hit some XP machines"
  • But what about Windows' narcolopsy problems? What will fix those?

  • I'm so shocked (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NXprime ( 573188 )
    Deep sleep/hibernate problems? Oh wow I didn't see this coming except for the RC1 release I tried and reviewed months ago. http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=209542&cid= 17088628 [slashdot.org]

    What's odd is that none of those patches or things mentioned going wrong is what I was dealing with. I was getting the click of death from my hard drives until I rebooted the computer.

    I guess I can see this as very unfinished hardware drivers but for something as serious as this, Vista should have never been released
  • Some of the problem seems to be with some nvidia cards. The forums are full of people with 7900s (although not all seem to be affected) having issues returning from sleep.
  • MS was supposed to have fixed Standby issues as of Windows XP. Nice to see where their priorities are, nothing like the Aero interface I suppose. In all honesty, I'm much more likely to move toward Ubuntu Beryl than Vista.

  • Probably not Microsofts fault (Score:5, Interesting)

    by unoengborg ( 209251 ) on Sunday March 11, 2007 @10:28AM (#18307740) Homepage
    For once I'm not so sure we should blame Microsoft for all these sleep related problems. I would say hardware manufacturers is just as much to blame. They test their ACPI stuff and make sure it works in the current version of windows, and not that it follows the standard.

    When Microsoft creates a new version of windows they most likely develop it to follow the ACPI standard. By doing so, the functionality may break on non compliant boxes, and Microsoft will have to go back to add quirks to make it work.

    Being the dominant OS vender, Microsoft at usually manage to get full specs to the failing devices, and have a fair chance of compensate for the errors in the hardware and BIOS.
    Developers of other less common OSes, such as Linux may not be that lucky. So I really wish Microsoft hadn't bothered to fix this, unless of course they really are the ones that are responsible for this screw up, and left it to the hardware vendors. That way it would be easier for all OS vendors, including Microsoft, in the long run.

  • Yeesh - has there ever been a version of Windows that handled this well? I can't recall one that didn't have off and on problems, especially on laptops.

    Despite the many irritations that my Mac brought with it, this one thing that it does extremely well.
    • My thoughts exactly. Mind you, the ACPI standard still hasn't actually stabilised--the last update to it was in October (after seven years!).

      Still, I would assume backwards compatibility. No scratch that--I would expect it, but wouldn't count on it.
  • Maybe it's time to turn of the life support...
  • I'm running Vista Business on a laptop from leadcomp.com (MSI-1039; 2.2GHz, 1GB RAM, 100GB HDD, 256MB RAM), and I can confirm that when I leave the computer on overnight it often locks up 99% and is basically unusable without a hard reset. Ubuntu, on the other hand, works much better, and I can leave it on for days straight :) Hopefully one of these patches will solve the lockup problem with Vista.

  • When does the "Wow" start again? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Did they mean it like, "Wow, I can't believe they actually shipped this unfinished piece of shit!"

  • Mac and PC (Score:5, Funny)

    by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Sunday March 11, 2007 @02:54PM (#18309496)
    Well, this situation sounds ripe for lampooning in a new one of Apple's "Mac & PC" ads:

    Mac and PC in twin beds, an alarm goes off. Mac wakes up but PC was sitting up in bed twitching nervously.

    "Good morning--"

    "AH!"

    "I'm a... Mac."

    "And I'm a p-p-PC."

    "Hey, PC, haven't you been sleeping?"

    "No! No, I, uh, I-I can't sleep."

    "Really, do you need something?"

    "No, it's not that. I-I mustn't go to sleep because I'm afraid I won't wake up. There have been reports, you know, that since the release of Vista, PCs have had problems with not waking up from sleep."

    "Gee, that's too bad. Me, I have no problems waking up from sleep. I mean, within two seconds, I'm up and fully alert. That isn't true for you?"

    "..."

    "Uh, PC? PC, hello? Hey, PC, wake up!"

    "..."

    "Oh my."
  • When i first installed Vista it all worked great, sleep worked perfectly and i could come out fine.

    Now since i installed something (I believe my new GFX Drivers) it won't sleep. It'll turn the monitor off, but when i nudge the mouse or hit the keyboard it'll turn the monitor on and it'll be at the lock screen. According to powercfg it does support S3 sleep, strange.
  • The sleep problems that plague Macbooks take the cake. When you shut the lid, it's a crapshoot whether or not it will actually shut down at all. And you have to wait about a minute to find out, because it spends that long dumping RAM to disk for some twisted reason (I know the reason, so no flames. It's just that it's a lame reason.) I don't know how many times I've shut the lid and stuffed it in my pack, only to find that the damn thing has been running for an hour full tilt in a closed space. It's so hot
    • Dude, you're using your Mac with a Windows mentality. You clearly got a defective unit, so take it back and get it replaced for free. There's no need to grumble and pretend you have to live with it.

      Sleep has worked like an absolute charm on every Mac I've owned, including the Macbook Pro I'm typing on right now. I never had a PC where it worked.

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