I've been running Windows 7 Beta 64-bit for a few months, to see how it works with my software and hardware. I've been experiencing a problem for a while, and I can't pin point when it started to happen, or what had changed to cause it. Quite regularly I leave my computer idle for minutes or hours at a time, whilst I do other things. Sometimes I put Windows in standby mode (S3), and other times, I'll leave it on. What seems to happen quite frequently is that Windows crashes all by itself, and reboots. It starts loading again, and after the windows logo has disappeared - just before the log in GUI is about to load - a BSOD appears for about 2 seconds, whilst a message stating 'crash dump to disk' or something similar, scrolls up to 100. At this point, the computer reboots, and the loop continues. The only way to get out of it, is to F8 during POST, and chose my regular disk to boot from into Windows XP. (It's worth noting, W7B is installed on it's own separate, dedicated hard disk, which is set as default boot disk). Once I restart from XP, Windows 7 loads fine. So far, I've not been able to identify when this BSOD crash happens, because I am usually away from the computer. When I return, it's usually in the process of re-booting. Things I've noticed are: This has occurred both in standby (s3) And during idle, although in this state, it has been during the monitor going into power save mode. It's important to realise that this doesn't happen all the time. Sometimes W7B will be rock solid, during these two states. It appears to be random, but more frequent than not. If anyone has experienced this, I'd be interested to hear your views.

The same issue recently started occuring for me. I thought I had pinpointed this to either a Skype startup error or my electric-sheep screensaver, but now I cannot be sure. Had you installed either of those? note: System restore (to a date prior to skype install) did not correct the issue.

Glad to hear someone else has experienced this! I have neither Skype or that screen saver installed. I'm suspicious that it could have something to do with AV software starting a scan, or Windows indexing maybe. It's hard to pin point. I could look at the event log, but wouldn't know where to start!

Try changing the power settings from a preset to time to never when full power is connected. Sometimes the cause is when it tries to either turn off the hard drives or goes into sleep mode. Perhaps it could be when the screen dims and something happens to win7 when it goes to sleep.

I have exactly the same problem with the 7100 build.Whenever I leave my system idle/standby it will turn the display off first, then the mouse/keyboard will not respond.On the hard reset, windows 7 can't boot (throws a BSOD for 1 second then loops a restart again).Repair windows from the disk doesn't solve it. I'm going to try to set times for the idle time to 999 minutes, get a image restore point and a backup image in an external drive and keep you posted.http://i71.photobucket.com/albums/i134/Madvil/Power-management-plan.jpgLet's hope it works.

Mine is doing something similar. If I close the lid on my Dell D630, it goes into sleep mode fine and comes out fine. If I walk away from the machine for a while (plugged in) and come back, it's gone into sleep mode on it's own. However, many times, the system shuts down with an unexpected error.The screen goes dark after my preset time, then I hear the fans come on, first low, then high - usually a sign of the processors being locked up. Then the computer shuts down.The events log show nothing except 'Unexpected shutdown.'When I restart the computer, it starts at the screen you see after a crash asking if you want to start windows normally. I do, and the system is fine.Sometimes, if I come back to it before it's shutdown, I'll find it locked up. If I'm patient, after I strike acouple of keys and wait, it'll go through the routine - fans will come on high, there will be no reponse, then after about 2 minutes, I'll get control back and things go back to normal.I ran Chkdsk - no errors or issues.I'm concerned because sudden shutdowns cause problems with open programs. For instance, a crash last night damaged my Outlook installation and I had to repair it.