HELP! PC goes into sleep mode mid-matches! I'm stumped!

Technical Support
1

I have a Dell XPS 15 9550 with an NVidia GTX 960M and an Intel Core i7.

A while ago my laptop started randomly going into hibernate while I was playing games like Overwatch, but when doing other tasks or playing other games, it ran just fine. My screen goes black, and I still hear the game and Discord, then the fans stop and the PC shuts down completely (power button doesn’t pulse like it usually does when you set it to sleep), then I boot it back up, the dell logo shows, and the apps I was running are still open like nothing happened.

Previously I had issues with the pc shutting down due to CPU throttling and possibly some thermal issues, but they hadn’t happened in about 3 months or longer. And when it hibernates randomly, the temps are below 85C.

I reinstalled Windows and updated all of my drivers through Support Assist, Dell’s website and Nvidia GeForce Experience to see if the problem was caused by a driver issue, and the problem persists.

The weird part is, sleep mode is disabled in my power settings (and in the power plan).

The event logs show Kernel Power- Computer entering sleep, reason: Application API. Occasionally before this event there is a DCOM error, but not always.

I considered that maybe it’s from having too many things plugged into the USB ports and overcharging the battery (my PC is always plugged into power when I play), but now I only have a mouse and a keyboard (only the mouse has fancy LEDs), and it still happens. Also worth mentioning the diagnostics on SupportAssist show that the battery might need replacement but the laptop is only 2 years old?

I bought a powered USB hub to test if the ports were drawing too much power, plugged my devices on the hub and this didn’t solve the problem.

I’m in desperate need of help, because this not only affects my gaming experience but I’m also an animation student and don’t know if I’ll be able to work on digital animation projects if the computer can’t even deal with Overwatch at the lowest setting…

I suspect it could be a driver issue, anyone experiencing similar problems?

2

Just based on the event log it sounds like this is going to be caused by some other program on the computer. Let’s open Event Viewer and go to Windows Logs > Application and do a search for the string PowerEvent handled successfully. If you’re able to find anything, it should hopefully indicate what had caused the sleep to occur.

3

Hi! Thank you for your reply, I went to check the application event log and found this string of PowerEvent handled successfully: i.imgur .com/2KTRADE.png

My PC entered sleep mode at around 14:33:33

I also found an error that occurred while I was playing, not entirely sure if it relates to the crash: i.imgur .com/s7KJOmd.png

Not sure what I can do with this information…

4

I think it’s either:

  • Your laptop is getting too hot and it goes into sleep mode to protect from further damage

  • If your keyboard or mouse are wireless, there is a bug in Windows where it stops realizing you are using them for input and goes to sleep because it thinks you’re inactive. This can be fixed by using different peripherals and/or making sure your power plan is set to never sleep when plugged in. (delete current plan and make a new one that doesn’t sleep anything)

5

I have checked my temperatures while playing- GPU and CPU don’t exceed 80C and the event logs don’t show critical temperature events. My mouse and keyboard are both wired.

6

80C is quite hot, I don’t think your 960 should be reaching that temperature. Did you look at any of the Google results for “computer goes to sleep while gaming”?

7

It doesn’t, usually it’s around 75C, a normal temperature. I’m just saying it doesn’t exceed it. 100% established it is not temperature throttling.

I have googled a lot, and even went to a tech shop. Problem persists.

8

It’s not particularly hot for a laptop GPU - tiny cases, worse cooling!

Hi Neko, I’m not sure how I found your thread (it appears to be several months old and possibly still unsolved) but…

Look in your Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System section. On the right “Filter Current Log…”. Choose “Kernel-Power” from the extraordinarily long checkbox list that behaves poorly when typed into (great UX, Microsoft!) and changed “Logged” to Last 7 days or some other manageable period you know this has occurred in.

Look for Event ID 42 - this will be your entering sleep state log. The Target/Effective State value in the Details > EventData section will tell us exactly what type of sleep your computer is going into (sleep, hybrid, hibernate, etc). More info: docs.microsoft .com/en-us/windows/desktop/power/system-power-states
Note: I believe (for our limited range we’re interested in) the Event Viewer “EffectiveState” value is ~sleep state number + 1 from empirical testing - usually my sleeps are State 4, but when I enabled hibernation for this and forced it via command line I went into State 5.

On the “General” tab of your Event ID 42 there should be a “Sleep Reason:” - what does this say? Most likely it will be “Application API”. If so, look at the corresponding Event ID 187 (a few seconds earlier). Under the details section in EventDate > ApiCallerName will be the name of the process that called the Windows SetSuspendState or SetSystemPowerState APIs. This is shutdown.exe for me where I have called the executable via the command line, and explorer.exe when I use the start menu - hopefully it says something interesting/useful for you!

Could you reply with:

  1. The value of Target/EffectiveState
  2. The “Sleep Reason:” for the relevant power event
  3. The ApiCallerName for the corresponding 'doze power API call event, if applicable.

Edited by Blizzard - this topic is being locked as this is an old post which was bumped. Please create your own thread or contact support.