My home computer setup consists of a network with three computers – an older server running Windows XP, an HP Pavilion a6420a desktop, and HDX9000 notebook both running Windows Vista. The network runs well, although the HP a6420a will frequently not wake up from ‘sleep’ mode and I must turn the computer off and back on to restart. I recently used the Bit Defender Rescue CD Virus Scanner Bootable which identified two problems: Auto-detection seems to hang, check BIOS settings; and APM Disabled – APM is not SMP safe. What are these problems and what action is necessary to resolve them? Can you also advise on how to fix the sleep problem?

Power management problems are always a bit tricky to diagnose and fix since there could be several different potential causes of the issue. From my research there seems to be a few users who have reported problems waking HP Pavilion computers from sleep mode, but this is not surprising since most computers under certain circumstances may encounter such difficulties. Unfortunately there is not a single universal fix for this problem so we will instead try a few different procedures. As always, before proceeding any further you should ensure that Windows is completely up-to-date with all the latest updates and patches. Windows Vista usually downloads and installs updates automatically, but it would be worthwhile to double-check everything has been updated. Go to the Start menu > “All Programs” > “Windows Update”. In the Windows Update window that appears, click the “Check for updates” link in the left-hand pane. This will proceed to query Windows Update for any available updates. Should updates be found, click the “Install updates” button to proceed to download and install those updates.

Once Windows is updated, before proceeding with any of the procedures that we are going to outline below, you should check whether the computer is still under warranty. This is important since we don’t want to go changing various settings and potentially make it more difficult for technical support down the line if the computer is under warranty and you decide to give them a call later. Using your warranty support is also the best option in many cases since they would have a much better idea about the computer, together with any known issues and resolutions if they have seen this problem before.

However, should the computer be out of warranty then short of paying for technical support through the computer manufacturer (if such pay per incident support is available) we will need to look at methods to solve the problem ourselves. One of the more common explanations for this problem is that the computer itself wakes-up correctly, but the monitor does not and remains in sleep mode. This can give the impression that the computer is still sleeping. Normally this problem is not related to the monitor itself but instead the video or graphics card inside the computer. This is because turning the monitor off and on again generally does not wake it up. The root cause of the problem is normally the lack of a video signal (or an incorrect video signal) being sent to the monitor. I have seen this problem occur on computers as recent as manufactured late last year, so it is certainly still a valid potential cause of the problem. Generally this issue can be resolved if the manufacturer has released updated drivers to address this problem. Since your computer is a few years old (as it is running Windows Vista), if this was a recognised issue then hopefully enough time has passed for an update to be released that can fix the problem. Visit the HP Support website and check for any updated drivers for your model of computer. In particular, you should look for any updated drivers which relate to the video or graphics card, monitor, motherboard, BIOS or chipset. The reason for looking for updated video or graphics card and monitor drivers is fairly obvious, since the monitor sleeping could be the cause of the problem. The motherboard, BIOS and chipset drivers all relate to the motherboard of the computer and the hardware and embedded software on the motherboard. This is particularly relevant since the motherboard mediates communication to the video and graphics output and, depending on the configuration of your computer, the computer may have on-board graphics (meaning that the video and graphics card is integrated onto the motherboard) and therefore upgrading the various motherboard drivers may also upgrade various driver components of the graphics.

There could be plenty of other reasons why this problem may occur and HP has published an article on their website which outlines many of these potential causes and how they can be troubleshot and resolved. I would encourage you to read through this article for HP computers running Windows Vista: h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00845808 . I would be very interested to hear the outcome, so please let me know whether any of the procedures in that article were able to resolve the problem.

We will now move onto looking at the two messages that appear when you are running the Bit Defender Rescue CD. These messages do not seem to be related to the utility which the Bit Defender CD is running (presumably an antivirus utility) but are related to the Linux operating system that the CD uses. Even though you are not using Linux on your computer, if you boot from a particular device (e.g. hard drive, CD/DVD, USB drive) then the device must have an operating system which it can boot into and run whatever programs need to be run. In the case of the Bit Defender Rescue CD the operating system used appears to be Linux, as my research has indicated that the messages you quoted can appear during the Linux bootup procedure. The first message about “Auto-detection seems to hang, check BIOS settings” indicates that there was a problem when the operating system attempted to automatically detect the devices on your computer. The second error message about “APM Disabled – APM is not SMP safe” is more informational (rather than a problem) that Advanced Power Management has been disabled as it is not compatible with Symmetric Multiprocessing. Basically, this means that the processor inside your computer has multiple cores and APM is not compatible when the computer is running in this mode. This is nothing to be concerned about and is not related to the other power management issue you are experiencing with the computer not waking from sleep. Most new computers have more advanced and modern power management systems than APM which is not even supported in Windows Vista, where the new ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) standard is used.

Since your computer was manufactured to use Windows Vista it would have been configured to work with this operating system. Therefore, it is not surprising that you are running into difficulties when attempting to boot a different operating system (Linux) for which the computer has not been configured. Therefore, I would not be too concerned about these error messages and would not attempt to make any configuration changes to clear them, since you could cause other problems on the computer. If you are unable to use the Bit Defender Rescue CD at all, as these error messages prevent it from running, then I would also not be concerned as it is unlikely this CD would help resolve the main problem (i.e. the computer waking from sleep) since from your description the rescue CD appears to be a virus scanning utility, whereas the cause of this problem is most likely a configuration issue rather than a virus-related problem.