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My screen is scrambled on return from standby. What can I do?

Question:

Recently, my screen either fails to awaken or when it does, it’s scrambled
until I can get the password in to wake up Windows 7. I wiggle the mouse, click
the mouse and then enter my password blindly and then it comes back in most of
the time after a few minutes. It should be noted that I cannot turn the monitor
off as even the power button is not responsive. The video card is a relatively
new GE Force 210. I removed a recent NVDIA, update and reinstalled original
drivers to no avail. What else could this be?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #73
, I look at a case where a screen scrambles when coming back
from Standby.

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Standby scrambles screen

Well, unfortunately, standby can occasionally be somewhat destabilizing,
particularly for video drivers.

I would certainly make sure that you have the latest video
drivers for your specific video hardware.

Analyzing the video driver

As long as that login screen displays normally when you have not done
standby (in other words, when you power up your machine or so forth) that
implies that the screen resolution being used by that login screen is, in fact,
appropriate and something that your card can handle.

Unfortunately, there really isn’t a good, you know, “Wave this magic wand
and make the problem go away.” Your best bet is the drivers.

Standby BIOS issues

There is a small chance that it may in fact be a BIOS-related issue. The
computer BIOS is in fact involved very heavily with things like standby. As a
result, issues with the BIOS can sometimes reflect in problems coming back from
standby.

So that’s something else to look into.

Standby is unreliable

Bottom line is to make sure you’re running the latest video drivers. If that
doesn’t solve the problem, consider seeing if there’s a BIOS update for your
machine.

If there isn’t, ultimately you know this is really one of the reasons that
I personally have trained myself not to use standby. Not because it isn’t a
good feature when it works; it’s just that it turned into something that is
somewhat unreliable – unreliable enough that I just choose not to use
it.

Next from Answercast 73 – How do I
make a URL clickable in email?

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1 thought on “My screen is scrambled on return from standby. What can I do?”

  1. I don’t think standby should be classified as generally unreliable. Certainly, it may not work well on some machines, but on average, in my experience, I’ve had good results with it (even on older machines). For example, I have the following machines that use standby regulary and reliably:

    Ubuntu Linux on Asus desktop (about 2 yr old), standby used daily, rebooted monthly.
    Win 2000 on Dell Optiplex 260 desktop (about 10 yr old), standby used daily, rebooted monthly.
    Win XP Home on Toshiba Satellite laptop (about 10 yr old), used occasionally.

    Reply

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