Resolved Win 7 - sleep disabled (greyed out)

Hello,

I have a highly modified installation of Win 7 (using RT7) for my music server. The sleep mode seems to have been disabled after I disabled the G45 graphics chip driver. The display is now running in VGA mode from the processor (I assume with the generic Windows VGA driver), but the sleep has been disabled and is the word is greyed out.

Unfortunately, I uninstalled the command prompt feature with RT7, without thinking about the consequences, so all I have to work with is the registry. I tried following a tip online to add a key to the registry folder below, but it didn't work for me.

HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Policies\Microsoft

I may have to reinstall windows and start over, but I'd like to try to troubleshoot this and see if there's a way to reenable sleep in the registry.

It looks like the current driver is VGAsave. I'm not 100% sure that it supports sleep mode. Maybe there is a way to load a replacement VGA driver, if this is the case.

Any suggestions are appreciated.



Thanks

 

I am not sure what your modifications were to the installation but running a Repair install from the Windows 7 disc will replace the registry entries you have removed.

 

After some research, I have found that the generic VGA driver in Win 7 does not have a sleep feature. Does anyone have a suggestion for a VGA driver that has very low overhead (I run it set to 256 colors) and has the Standby feature or a software that can put the computer in Standby?

 

Some system specs would help. DO you have onboard graphics or is it an added card? Once I have the details of the card or the motherboard (whichever one applies) I could most likely find the correct drivers. I was not aware that the Sleep feature was in the VGA driver, I thought it was part of Windows 7 power saving feature.

I have onboard graphics and Windows 7 and it has a sleep function, only MOBO drivers were installed, nothing extra for graphics. Click on Start and then the arrow next to Shut down, Sleep appears in the menu is it missing on your setup.

May be running a Repair install would fix this, that will leave all your files and software intact but return all settings to default.

 

Hello Mark,

I have disabled the G45 chip on my board. Because this is a music server, I want to lower the latency of the machine by eliminating the graphics processing on the chip (it does accomplish this goal). Without the G45, Windows defaults to VGASave and the graphics are run on the CPU. VGA save does not have a sleep feature, so Repair will not change anything. I'm wondering if there is another generic VGA driver that has a sleep feature?


Cheers

 

I understand what you are doing. I've done some searching for an answer to this but other than experimenting with Vista VGA drivers I've not come across many viable solutions.

Please let us know if you find something that will work.

Did you actually disable or uninstall the onboard GPU if you uninstalled it you could try reinstalling and then just disabling it and disable in services.

This is one method I found to re-enable sleep in the Shut down menu not sure if it will work for you but may be worth a try.
From Control Panel, Power options, Change Plan Settings, Change Advanced Settings, click on + next to USB Settings, click on + again next to USB selective suspend settings and Disable the setting.

 

let me get this right , You disabled the onboard graphics but still have a picture so what video card are you using

oh and by the way VGAsafe is not run via the CPU it's still running through the G45 onboard GPU it just uses an generic VGA driver instead of the Intel driver

if your wanting to turn off all the pretty stuff that win7 does via GPU you need to do this

1: open :::Control Panel\Appearance and Personalization\Personalization

2: select ::: Windows Classic as the theme

this wil turn off all the aero stuff and speed up window access and such

 

Thanks Athlonite. What you say about the graphics chip running the VGA driver makes sense. The post where I read about how to limit the graphics processing claimed that the graphics were run from the CPU. However, not knowing the inner workings of the circuit, your explanation makes as much sense.

I already have the Aero and other visual effects removed or disabled. At this point, I'd like to just be able to make the machine sleep without turning the HD graphics driver or other processor intensive items back on.

 

preferably you should reinstall the Intel Graphics driver to regain sleep mode you can still leave aero and all that other garbage turned off but you'll need an driver that understands the GPU and what sleep modes it will work with

 

I have the driver uninstalled for a reason, because it dramatically increases the latency of the machine. This is a high definition video driver and I'm running the machine with 256 colors. Using that driver sacrifices more performance than I'm willing to live with.

 

then unfortunately your going to be stuck with no sleep mode as far as I know there are no basic vga drivers that include power saving modes that'll work with the G45 onboard GPU... most modern GPU's don't do less than 16bit color very well at all maybe try some other GPU card like an PCI versions of Matrox or S3

 

see Arie agrees with me