APM problem with Dell laptop

Hello,

I am having a problem with my Dell Inspiron 7000 A400GT. With
Advanced Power Management (APM) enabled, the computer will randomly
freeze, requiring a power down. With APM disabled, the computer beeps
loudly every few seconds whenever in in battery mode, with a fully
charged battery (new battery) - making it unusable for watching
DVDs... APM needs enabled, to add the features to preserve charge,
and I like that icon that tells you how much battery is left. (Switch
to APM and the beeps go away, and the charge shows 92%.)
Today when I enabled APM the computer went to standby immediately
(all the timers were off...) and then immediately restarted, and
repeated this loop. Hard reboot didn't resolve it, I had to turn APM
back off in Safemode.
During bootup there is a message - "You're system memory has
changed or you're Suspend-to-Disk file is corrupt or missing. Please
see Suspend-to-Disk in the online user's guide for help." This
feature is related to power management. I can't find this in the
online user's guide. The "online guide" at the Dell site is a
download you have to install and access locally. Anyway there is no
such entry in the guide, it's not in the index, and search doesn't
produce any matches. I don't know how to restore the Suspend-to-Disk
file, as there's nothing at Dell's site (that I can find).
The computer came with Windows 2000 SP3 loaded. The computer's
BIOS version is A15 (040A). According to Dells website A15 is current
- it doesn't list other numbers, just A15. There is another BIOS
version message that says Phoenix Bios 4.0 Release 6.0 - and I don't
know what that is. The power management features in BIOS have not been
enabled. The screen says to disable them if there are compatibility
issues, and with most features it says Windows 98 will override the
setting.

Any help greatly appreciated.

i would check the cmos battery.
also it sounds like the hard drive could have some bad spots that these
systems files, paging and or hibernate.sys are sitting on top of.
i would boot dell diagnostics and run complete diags, and test the
memory and hard drive.

wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am having a problem with my Dell Inspiron 7000 A400GT. With
> Advanced Power Management (APM) enabled, the computer will randomly
> freeze, requiring a power down. With APM disabled, the computer beeps
> loudly every few seconds whenever in in battery mode, with a fully
> charged battery (new battery) - making it unusable for watching
> DVDs... APM needs enabled, to add the features to preserve charge,
> and I like that icon that tells you how much battery is left. (Switch
> to APM and the beeps go away, and the charge shows 92%.)
> Today when I enabled APM the computer went to standby immediately
> (all the timers were off...) and then immediately restarted, and
> repeated this loop. Hard reboot didn't resolve it, I had to turn APM
> back off in Safemode.
> During bootup there is a message - "You're system memory has
> changed or you're Suspend-to-Disk file is corrupt or missing. Please
> see Suspend-to-Disk in the online user's guide for help." This
> feature is related to power management. I can't find this in the
> online user's guide. The "online guide" at the Dell site is a
> download you have to install and access locally. Anyway there is no
> such entry in the guide, it's not in the index, and search doesn't
> produce any matches. I don't know how to restore the Suspend-to-Disk
> file, as there's nothing at Dell's site (that I can find).
> The computer came with Windows 2000 SP3 loaded. The computer's
> BIOS version is A15 (040A). According to Dells website A15 is current
> - it doesn't list other numbers, just A15. There is another BIOS
> version message that says Phoenix Bios 4.0 Release 6.0 - and I don't
> know what that is. The power management features in BIOS have not been
> enabled. The screen says to disable them if there are compatibility
> issues, and with most features it says Windows 98 will override the
> setting.
>
> Any help greatly appreciated.
>

On Feb 27, 5:46 pm, Bren...@mailinator.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am having a problem with my Dell Inspiron 7000 A400GT. With
> Advanced Power Management (APM) enabled, the computer will randomly
> freeze, requiring a power down. With APM disabled, the computer beeps
> loudly every few seconds whenever in in battery mode, with a fully
> charged battery (new battery) - making it unusable for watching
> DVDs... APM needs enabled, to add the features to preserve charge,
> and I like that icon that tells you how much battery is left. (Switch
> to APM and the beeps go away, and the charge shows 92%.)
> Today when I enabled APM the computer went to standby immediately
> (all the timers were off...) and then immediately restarted, and
> repeated this loop. Hard reboot didn't resolve it, I had to turn APM
> back off in Safemode.
> During bootup there is a message - "You're system memory has
> changed or you're Suspend-to-Disk file is corrupt or missing. Please
> see Suspend-to-Disk in the online user's guide for help." This
> feature is related to power management. I can't find this in the
> online user's guide. The "online guide" at the Dell site is a
> download you have to install and access locally. Anyway there is no
> such entry in the guide, it's not in the index, and search doesn't
> produce any matches. I don't know how to restore the Suspend-to-Disk
> file, as there's nothing at Dell's site (that I can find).
> The computer came with Windows 2000 SP3 loaded. The computer's
> BIOS version is A15 (040A). According to Dells website A15 is current
> - it doesn't list other numbers, just A15. There is another BIOS
> version message that says Phoenix Bios 4.0 Release 6.0 - and I don't
> know what that is. The power management features in BIOS have not been
> enabled. The screen says to disable them if there are compatibility
> issues, and with most features it says Windows 98 will override the
> setting.
>
> Any help greatly appreciated.

Only advice I can give you is to try upgrading to service pack 4 (if
you haven't yet).

And of course run the diagnostics as Jay suggested.

On Feb 27, 9:03 pm, Jay B <j...@audiman.net> wrote:
> i would check the cmos battery.
> also it sounds like the hard drive could have some bad spots that these
> systems files, paging and or hibernate.sys are sitting on top of.
> i would boot dell diagnostics and run complete diags, and test the
> memory and hard drive.
>

How do I check the cmos battery? I made a boot-up diagnostic disk
(from Dell website). Everything passed.

> Only advice I can give you is to try upgrading to service pack 4 (if
> you haven't yet).
>
> And of course run the diagnostics as Jay suggested.

Is there an issue that's specifically addressed in service pack 4? I
would have to buy that, so I'd want to know it's the problem.