Monitor won't wake up when coming back from sleep (Windows 7)

OK, This worked for me.

I have an NVidia GeForce 8600 GT (EGA brand) graphics card using the VGA port for my LCD monitor.  My OS is Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit. 

I went into Device Manager to check the version of my graphics card driver.  It was "NVidia GeForce 8600 GT (Microsoft Corporation - WDDM v1.1 )".

Why is that strange?  Because I know that when I installed the operating system, I downloaded the latest NVidia drivers directly from NVidia's website.  Apparently in the Windows Update control panel, I never changed the default from "Install updates automatically ."  Microsoft, in all its wisdom, updated my graphics card driver automatically through Update with a driver dating from 2009!

I promptly re-downloaded and installed the drivers from NVidia's site and now everything works as it should.  No longer does my monitor not wake up with the rest of my computer!

I also changed my Windows Update settings to "Download updates but let me choose whether to install them ."  And I install the important/critical updates and NOT the optional device driver ones.

Note to Microsoft if you are monitoring this thread:   Have Windows Update check the internal version #s and dates of the current device drivers before recommending that users "update" them.  This will prevent installing older drivers over newer ones.  Better yet, have a facility to get the latest drivers directly from the chipmakers themselves.

I grazed the thread, and have more than a little experience building/troublshooting, so I offer this:

If you have the problem intermittently, check your RAM and Hard drive, your system is unstable.  You may even check your power supply.

If it happens every time, go into your BIOS under power management.  Set the sleep mode to [S3], and set the "Wake From" option to [OS].   Then make sure you set it to wake from USB or PS/2, which ever your keyboard/mouse is.

Hope this helps

I recently upgraded my Dell Dimension desktop to Windows 7. In order to do so, I had to install a new grapchis card (NVIDIA GeForce).

I set the PC to sleep after a period of time. When I go to move the mouse and wake the computer back up, the PC itself seems to respond, but the monitor never comes back from sleep. I have no choice but to reboot to get the monitor back.

Any suggestions?

Same problem so I changed my power settings... then things got worse....blue screen ... then the windows 7 computer with  Nividia Ge Force 8800gt slowed to a crawl. I then lost the ability to change the power settings. When the computer started (took over 3 minutes to log on)  it reported lots of programes hadn't installed. Then I lost the aero effect so only had basic graphics. It would have seemed like a memory or graphic problem but it turned out to be heavy use of the CPU caused by a microsoft program called windows presentation font cache using about 50% of of the cpu. Once I had disabled this program in service in task manager all worked perfectly again. Then I checked the registry to find why I had lost the ability to alter the setting in the power and found there is two copies in there. one a default and one that is used ... this allows using the default to correct the used if it becomes corrupt. Anyway both was ok. Back to services and the desktop services manager which restarted the power settings. All is now working perfectly as I have set the display to "never" and left the computer  still in the balanced program to sleep after 30 mins. So do check out the amount of use by the CPU!!

I also had the same problem and I am by no means an expert, but so far me setting my display to never turn off has fixed this for me.  I'd tried changing advanced power settings like turning off hybrid sleep, etc that I'd read other places and they worked for a short period of time and then stopped working so I'll see how this does but so far so good.  NOW, however, my computer is randomly shutting off by itself from time to time and restarting.  I don't know if this is part of the same issue or what......

Nikia