How do I make the hibernate and standby modes work

[Eric Legge]

I upgraded my IBM desktop computer from Windows 98 SE to Windows XP Home
Edition. Before upgrading I followed Microsoft's advice, and reflashed the BIOS
with the latest XP-compliant update, and downloaded the relevant XP device
drivers for the system's devices and peripherals from IBM's website.

Everything installed properly, but a mysterious "unknown device" keeps being
recognised at startup, and whenever I try using the standby and hibernate modes
the following message comes up:

"The device driver for the 'PC/AT Enhanced PS/2 Keyboard (101/102-Key' is
preventing the machine form entering hibernation. Please close all applications
and try again. If this problem persists, you may need to update this driver."

XP's Device Manager reports that the keyboard is using the XP driver, and that
there is no update available.

I need to know how to make the hibernate and standby modes work.

Any ideas?

Eric,

PC Buyer Beware!

http://www.legge40.freeserve.co.uk/BuyerBeware.htm

[BipolarBill]

Have you installed the chipset drivers for the laptop?

If you have a secondary keyboard or PS/2 mouse, unplug it.

[rangeral]

I hesitate to recommend using these power down modes on branded computers cause if you get it to work some times you can't get out of the mode, since it is a brand name its probably running keyboard software to make all those extra buttons work which would prevent you from going to or clash with hibernate or standby. If there installed might try disabling them see what happens.

[Eric Legge]

Someone on a newsgroup posted this reply that hit the nail on the head...

As is often still the case, the error message is misleading. The device driver for the keyboard is not at fault here, so even if an update is available, it won't help.

The problem is caused by third-party software that has installed a kernel-mode device driver, which has attached itself to the 18042prt.sys keyboard driver - and it is not compatible with XP. The most common culprit is Adobe Type Manager 4.0 (ATM), which installs the Atmhelpr.sys driver.

As a temporary fix, either uninstall ATM, or use Find, and rename the offending file Atmhelpr.xxx. Doing that disables ATM's font-smoothing effect. If you want to use font-smoothing, you can enable XP's version.

Note that other third-party software can cause the same problem. That is why it is always best to do a clean installation of a new operating system instead of upgrading from one operating system to its successor, because the upgrade doesn't allow you to install and test each piece of software on its own. The upgrading process merely rebuilds the Registry around the installed software, and therefore leaves much of the old operating system in place when it should be removed.

To read a Knowledge Base article on this subject called "Unable to Use Power Management Features", enter the reference Q302414 here -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=kbinfo&.

That deals with the confusion surrounding the error message. But you still have to sort out the mysterious "unknown device". To track it down, you can search the Windows Registry.

From Start => Run, enter RegEdit, click on OK, click the + beside HKey_Local_Machine, and click on Enum to highlight it. Press the Ctrl and F keys, and enter "unknown" into the search box. When you press the Enter key the window that comes up should show the entry for a device with class "Unknown". This is the unknown device.

Next, look in the other lines in this Registry entry for clues, which will depend on the device. A plug-and-play printer, for example, will have a hardware ID string that usually states the printer's name. But a PCI adapter card, the key for which shows up in the left-hand window, will have a name such as -

Ven_11C1&De_0042&Subsys_00401668.

This string identifies the vendor, the device, and the subsystem. The name of the manufacturer is not usually provided, but knowing the manufacturer of the chipset used on the card, which is provided, is usually enough information to make it possible to obtain the latest driver file for the card.

The identification codes used in the string are listed on several Internet sites, and can easily be found by using the Google search engine. All you have to do is enter "PCI vendor list" in the search box. One such list can be found at - http://www.yourvote.com/pci. The Vendor.txt file explains how to decode the ID information contained in the Registry string.

Once you know the device's manufacturer and model, you can download and install the latest driver file for it from its website, and then the message the shows up at startup should disappear.

Eric,

http://www.legge40.freeserve.co.uk/BuyerBeware.htm

[BipolarBill]

Impressive! I hope it works.

[ukulele]

This is an ongoing problem that dates back to Win95. As Eric pointed out it most likely a software conflict with a third party software. On a desktop system I would just disable any power management in bios and disable sleep mode in windows, but with a laptop this might cause the battery to run down to fast. You may just get it work right by disableing any startup programs that you don't need running at startup. At lease it worked for a friend of mine that had a similar problem a few months back. He wanted to keep his system booted when he moved it from work to home. I might point out that he killed the battery right after the warrenty expired. :(