The Dell Inspiron 1100 Doesn't Wake Up From Sleep On Windows XP or Windows 2000

Sooo, I spent a day trying to figure out why my fiancee's laptop wouldn't resume from standby mode. Also known as waking up from sleep mode. To put it more bluntly, the screen remains black after shutting the laptop, opening it, and hitting space bar or power button. The more curious user would also notice you could still "use" the machine if you do it blindly without seeing the screen.

It was a boggling thing and I almost just jumped right in and reinstalled windows, since I thought that would be the most obvious culprit. However, I was wrong and the fix is much less time consuming.

Basically, a new video driver got pushed out this year (2005) and it has a bug in it preventing this. The driver was published on Windows Update, Dell's Site, and Intel's site for downloading, so anyone who does even minor driver updates downloaded it thinking it was a better version. Here is some info about the video card:

• Intel (R) Graphics Controler
• Model 82845GM
• Sub-model 845GM

The affected driver version is 6.14.10.4020. You need to re-download and install the older version of 6.14.10.3889 to fix the problem. It is a hard to find download, but I located it here at Intel's site (win2k_xp147.exe). Basically, just download the file, run it, and click yes you want to replace a newer version of the driver with an old one. Note, this file is only for Windows 2000/XP and the bug likely doesn't affect any other operating systems.

Also, here is the text I found that lead me to the fix, but I don't remember the source web site, sorry.

> > Hi
> >
> > My notebook is Dell Inspiron 1100 with Intel(R) 82845GM Graphics Controller
> > Recently I've updated the driver for my graphics card (see below) to new
> > version using Microsoft Update services. The new driver causes freeze when
> > the notebook comes from standby (black screen, nothing helps, only hard
> > reboot) - 100% repro.
> >
> > The buggy driver is: 6.14.10.4020
> > Dell Inc. - Video - Intel(R) 82845GM Graphics Controller
> > Date last published: 4/16/2005
> > Intel Corporation display software update released on January 23 2005.
> >
> > I rolled back to the old driver (6.14.10.3889) - the problem disappeared.
> > If you need more details please contact me at nissimn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > Please report this issue to Intel / Dell companies as needed.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >  Nissim Natanov
> >  Microsoft R&D, Haifa, Israel (nissimn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)