I've been using RC1 for a few weeks now and I've only got one serious problem (left): When I walk away from the computer and it enters sleep mode, the system apparently crashes. When I come back, the computer's in black boot-up screen with the "F1/continue" message. Pressing F1 or anything else does nothing; I have to shut down the system and reboot. When I do press the power button it shuts down instantly, not the usual 10 second delay. Restarting, W7 displays the "didn't shut down properly" screen. I should mention that if I tell it to sleep, it does so properly. I've got a Dimension8400 with 3gb ram. Thought it might be the BIOS, and upgraded, made no difference. I even reformatted the partition (dual-boot with XP-MC SP3) and reinstalled W7. Still no change. The only program in start-up at this time is the anti-virus (Avira). Any suggestions/ideas? Thanks in advance. Ed

Most likely culprit is the motherboard/chipset/storage controller drivers - with the BIOS coming in in second place (to include the BIOS of any attached controllers). I've got a similar issue, but it also BSOD's when told to sleep (STOP 0xA0). The suggestion I was given was to get Win7 beta drivers for my RAID controller (which I'm waiting for now).- John

Ed - There are a number of known issues with sleep/hybrid sleep/hibernation - which sound similar to the experience you're having. The solution at the moment is actually to disable sleep entirely. The programmers are working on the problem and should have it fixed by release time.

Thanks, John and Wolfie. I downloaded the latest Dell chipset driver just for the heck of it and will do a test when I'm done working. If it doesn't work I'll just disable sleep. I really do hope the programmers get the fix in. I always had trouble with XP hibernating as well, and it's a really useful feature. --Ed

Sleep has been an issue in a couple of ways, coincidently also running an 8400/3Gbytes of mem, Samsung 24 inch syncmaster monitor. Mode one is machine wakes but won't re-enable display. Power cycle monitor and everything is happy. Mode two is monitor resorts to VGA mode, and resizes all of the windows. Sometimes I'm able to reset back to 1920 X 1200 but sometimes reboot is required to get back full resolution. Occasionally it loses USB devices and won't recognize them without extracting the USB plug and re-inserting. They appear to have solved the missing machine mount problem present in beta but I haven't noticed it in RC. I used to 'lose' my win2000 box and could not rediscover it.

Interesting results of my experiment. I downloaded the chipset update from Dell, installed, and put "sleep" at 20 minutes. So far sleep/shutdown is working exactly as it should. I'll keep testing and report back. --Ed

Final results of my test: since I upgraded the chipset, W7 has mostly gone to sleep properly. The exceptions happen when I have a large number of programs open, then the system crashes. I've got a fix for now that seems to work: I keep automatic sleep off as suggested, but I set up the power button to initiate sleep. When I want to walk away for a few hours, I press that, and so far everything seems to come back properly when I resume. Thanks for all the help. Ed

Getting the same problem with my desktop PC but not my laptop (both x64). Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. I haven't tried it yet but found a possible culprit at http://www.windowsreference.com/windows-7/default-hard-disk-power-options-crashes-windows-7-when-recovering-from-sleep-mode/ - it says to try disabling the hard disk spin-down in the power settings. Makes sense in theory cos my laptop runs a SSD.

My Dell dimension 5150 occasionally goes to sleep on schedule then powers off unexpectedly in sleep. When I power back on I get an error message about improper shut down. Has happened about 8 times. I am using the default install settings for power management.