PC standby issues - any ideas?

Every time I put my PC into sleep mode, I start seeing these error messages—I've attached some screenshots—on both a blue screen and then a black one.
I’m honestly at a loss here; does anyone have any clue why this is happening or how I might actually fix it?

Windows 10

Thanks

View on flickr

View on flickr

It's possible something's busted, maybe the hard drive—since it's failing to find a boot device on the next startup, which would be the hard drive.

Are these "texts" just a random jumble of characters, or is there actually some meaning here? Because I'm not seeing any context attached.

Anyway, we don't know what kind of rig we're dealing with or which version of Windows is running... but most likely, some rogue program or driver is messing with the process, or maybe the system just refuses to go into standby mode.
As a first step, it might help to update everything—including Windows—to the latest available versions.

To get more specific, try running CMD -> run as administrator -> powercfg -requests
so you can see exactly what's causing the headache.

It is entirely possible that a USB drive remains plugged into the machine, and your BIOS is currently configured to prioritize external media as the primary boot device.

Jerry Robinson56 said:Is it possible you left a USB drive plugged in, and the BIOS is set to prioritize those over your hard drive during the boot sequence?

Nope.

Does Windows actually manage to successfully reboot the computer?

swiftowl7 said:Can Windows actually trigger a full system reboot?

Yes—it functions exactly the same way a standard restart does after you've powered the machine down. I went ahead and disabled the sleep mode settings to save some power, though let's be honest, that isn't really a permanent fix for the underlying issue.
As it stands, my Windows 10 setup is running entirely off an SSD, which includes all my primary software.

graniteranger81 said:Yeah, it's the same deal as when I'm doing a full reboot after shutting everything down. I actually tried disabling the sleep mode settings to save power, but honestly, that didn't really fix the underlying issue.

I'm afraid there might not be any other way around it. On the bright side, at least the PC still gives you the option to reboot on demand, which is a huge relief because with these kinds of hardware failures, you often end up having to pull the battery just to get a response; the system just freezes in sleep mode and won't respond to any "wake up" command whatsoever.

It’s pretty tough to make an educated guess here, but you could always try

1. pulling a stick of RAM out first to see if things stabilize, and then testing with just the other stick to see if one of them is acting up,
2. you could also try swapping out the HDD for an SSD just as an experiment, mainly to rule out point number three entirely, and if that doesn't do it, then...
3. it's most likely a motherboard issue.

It's a tricky one to troubleshoot. It's probably best to hand it over to a local repair shop where someone can really dive into the hardware.

So, what kind of specs are we looking at here?

fadedorca66 said:So, what kind of setup are we looking at here?

Asrock Z77 Extreme4 - Intel Z77
Intel Z77 processor Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4, Socket 1155
Socket 1155 HDD WD 500, SATA 3, 7,200 rpm
SSD ADATA SU650, 250GB
DDR 3 8GB Kingmax, 1600MHz, non-ECC, CL0.0, FLGG
LG DVD drive
Zalman 500-GS, 500W
Windows 10

When your PC restarts after a BSOD, does the SSD actually show up in the BIOS, or does it just vanish from the drive list entirely?

fadedorca66 said:When your computer reboots after a Blue Screen of Death, does the SSD show up in the BIOS, or does it just vanish from the drive list entirely?

It vanishes.

Maybe start there—swap out the SATA cable and the drive itself, just to see if the connectors are actually seated right and stuff.

Did you ever get that issue sorted out?

swiftowl7 said:Did you get it sorted out?

Not exactly—I just went ahead and disabled the standby mode entirely.

graniteranger81 said:Not quite—I actually just disabled the option for my PC to enter standby mode altogether.

I’m honestly asking mostly out of curiosity and a bit of self-interest, since this kind of glitch pops up quite a bit, and in my experience, it usually traces back to a faulty transistor or a chip on the motherboard within the power delivery zone, especially when we're talking about laptops. That doesn't seem to be what's happening with your setup, though, unless you're looking at a failing SSA drive.

Usually, you see this stuff happen with older, used laptops where it’s just not worth the time or money to hunt down the specific issue or pay for repairs because the machine isn't worth much anymore, so I don't bother digging too deep into those. But I will say, in those cases, there's typically no way to wake it up or even reboot it; once it goes to sleep, the only way to get it running again is to pull the battery for a second and then restart the system. It won't respond to anything else.

Since you're working with a desktop, your situation is a little strange because the power supply architecture is completely different. If I were in your shoes, I'd try an experiment: unplug your current SSD and HDD from the case, install a different hard drive, put Windows on that instead, and see if the problem persists. Just to test the waters. Another thing to look into would be swapping out the power supply to rule out a bad connection, or checking the connections between the PSU and the motherboard, like those 4 or 8-pin connectors right next to the CPU.

If you feel like tinkering with that, let me know how it turns out!