Vista 32 unable to communicate on wake-up

[Anonymous user]

I've read other threads related to this issue but I'm not sure if my problem is quite the same. I have the ES700, model no. BE700-UK and PowerChute version 2.1.1. The operating system is Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit.

I put my computer to sleep using the default power button setting in Windows, with hybrid sleep enabled. On waking my computer from sleep/hibernation, I was informed that it could not communicate with the UPS and I was unable to interact with the computer (frozen). Could not even bring up Task Manager to shut down PowerChute. Error boxes appeared, to do with Security and failures to initialise (I think). Screen blanked out a couple of times. I disconnected and reconnected the UPS from the USB port and after a short delay the computer appeared to begin re-boot, but in fact it resumed as if from hibernation.

Is the same issue as described in the other threads? Even if it is, it wasn't clear to me from those threads what the solution might be?

[Anonymous user]

I've read other threads related to this issue but I'm not sure if my problem is quite the same. I have the ES700, model no. BE700-UK and PowerChute version 2.1.1. The operating system is Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit.

I put my computer to sleep using the default power button setting in Windows, with hybrid sleep enabled. On waking my computer from sleep/hibernation, I was informed that it could not communicate with the UPS and I was unable to interact with the computer (frozen). Could not even bring up Task Manager to shut down PowerChute. Error boxes appeared, to do with Security and failures to initialise (I think). Screen blanked out a couple of times. I disconnected and reconnected the UPS from the USB port and after a short delay the computer appeared to begin re-boot, but in fact it resumed as if from hibernation.

Is the same issue as described in the other threads? Even if it is, it wasn't clear to me from those threads what the solution might be?

[TheNotoriousKMP_apc]

The other side of this is that the PC shouldn't really be placed into an altered state since the software won't wake the PC up to shutdown if the UPS is on battery....

[BillP]

a lot of the other threads describe this issue "Unable to communicate with APC Battery Back UP" randomly popping up while you are using it and its on which doesnt seem to be your case.

the first thing that comes to mind with your issue, if it only does it when you come out of sleep mode or hibernation, is that the PC is disabling/turning off the USB ports on the machine to conserve power when it goes to sleep/hibernate.

you can look in the device manager in the control panel and look under "Universal Serial Bus (USB) controllers" and then right click and go to properties on each one of the "USB root hub" items that you see (probably 4 or 5 at least) under Universal Serial Bus controllers. There should be a power management tab on each of those properties boxes and you want to make sure that the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" checkbox is NOT selected.

If that doesnt work, then we can look into other details of the situation.

[Anonymous user]

Thanks for the response.

The "unable to communicate" hasn't so far popped up randomly as described in the other threads.

I checked the USB root hub entries (10 of them, although my computer has only 6 USB ports?) and the checkbox was already cleared in all of them.

"The Notorious K..." does have a point in his post. I don't normally use Sleep/HIbernate, but I tried it as I thought the UPS would hibernate the computer and I wanted to be sure I would be able to wake it up again. I am new to UPS devices so I may well have misunderstood something.

[voidstar_apc]

The other side of this is that the PC shouldn't really be placed into an altered state since the software won't wake the PC up to shutdown if the UPS is on battery....

I'm not so sure this is a problem under hybrid sleep/hibernation. The computer will save a hibernation file before sleeping. If the computer loses power during this time, it will resume from hibernation when it turns back on.

Foxycat appears to be seeing something similar. When the computer woke up, it froze before it could remove the hibernation file. Disconnecting the UPS from the computer somehow caused the computer to crash and reboot. On startup, the computer noticed the hibernation file and resumed from it.

From the information given, it's hard to say whether PowerChute or the UPS were the cause or if there's some other causative agent at work. Googling exact messages in the error boxes might reveal useful information. Also, foxycat may want to consider sleep/hibernating the computer with the UPS disconnected to see if it's a UPS problem, and also trying it with PowerChute uninstalled.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thank you.
I've since done a Restart, and I've noticed since then that when I open PowerChute Windows asks for permission to continue, which it didn't before. I suspect the problem I had might have been caused by my not restarting after installing the software. I wasn't prompted to do this so thought it wasn't necessary.
As I don't normally use Sleep/Hibernate (I set the Windows "power" button to "Shut Down" when I first got the machine) I don't know whether it ever worked on this computer!

Message was edited by: foxycat

UPDATE
APC Support have said I need to turn off Away Mode to use normal Hibernation settings but I am not sure how to do this. I found reference to Away Mode in the Power Options under Multimedia settings, and I believe it may have been turned on some time ago when we experimented with streaming photos to the TV via the X-Box. We didn't get it to work properly and I don't use Windows Media Centre (as opposed to windows Media Player). The Setting is currently "prevent idling to sleep".
Last night I tried Sleep again, with PowerChute installed, and was unable to wake up the PC. When I pushed the Power button on the PC the fans started up but nothing else happened. I had to disconnect and reconnect the power cable to get it to boot, then it came up as if from hibernation, with the windows open on screen.
I have now uninstalled PowerChute as I simply don't trust it.
To top off the evening, after I shut the PC down for the night, I moved my mouse connection from a USB hub to a PS/2 adaptor, to free up a USB port. As soon as I plugged in the PS/2 connector, the machine booted up without my touching its Power button. Does this have something to do with Away Mode?

I don't really want to use Hibernate at all, which is why I've never found up up until now that there are issues with it on my PC.

Message was edited by: foxycat on 13 January