My wife's PC has been having a strange symptom: her PC won't go to sleep. When I try to find out why, I discovered that her Sleep option under the power icon simply isn't there. Since there's no Sleep button, it doesn't time out and go to sleep at all.
I've been chasing this down for a while now, and after diving down the rabbit hole of Microsoft forums and Stack Exchange and all sorts of other places, I think I've figured out what's going on.
And, naturally, it comes down to AMD.
Unlike my PC, which has an NVidia GeForce 3070, she has an AMD Radeon graphics card. That distinction is important here, because on my PC I have it set to inform me when new NVidia drivers are present while my wife's PC automatically installs new Radeon drivers. That's mainly because NVidia has a history of having some janky driver updates, and I figured that if I didn't want to get involved with being the IT guy even more than I already am I'd just let it roll on her PC.
Well, as it turns out, if the AMD Radeon drivers get too far ahead --version-wise-- of the AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, then the Adrenalin Edition craps out and the Sleep option vanishes. If you then go and manually fix the drivers and the version of the Adrenalin Edition, the Sleep option comes back and everything behaves normally.
It's one thing if the version/corruption issue is strictly AMD's fault, but come on. Why does it affect Microsoft Windows 11 and its freaking SLEEP option? Are you telling me that there's a memory leak somewhere in one of these two areas that's big enough to drive a truck through that's causing this?
/sigh
Having an IT guy in the house is just the BEST! Atheren
ReplyDeleteUnless you are the IT guy. I'm the IT guy for not only my family (which includes remote work for the kids) but for my Mom.
DeleteThat includes one story where my parents had --after much cajoling by me-- went with replacing their Windows XP PC with a Mac. I figured that they couldn't screw it up because Macs were famously un-screwup-able.
Silly me.
About 2-3 months later I got a call from my Mom, saying my Dad couldn't login to the Mac. Turns out he somehow managed to nuke his account on the Mac, and we had to go in and get the account fixed via an admin account, which involved a call to Apple Support. THAT was the most excruciating thing, because I made it explicit to the guy on the other end of the line that I work in UNIX/LINUX for my job, and he still treated me like I was an 80 year old who'd never used a computer in their life.
Him: "Ok, we're going to need to force it to restart."
Me: "I know LINUX underpins the Mac, is it "shutdown ry 0"?
Him: "I need you to type.... s... h... u... t... d... o... w... n... space... r... y... space... zero"
My Dad watched all this, while I was struggling to not claw my eyeballs out, with an amused look on his face. It was as if he was saying "You THOUGHT you were free, but I'm clawing you back in!!!"
By comparison, my work for my wife has been "I have a problem" and she lets me fix it my way. Unfortunately, I only find out about her problems at 5:45 AM, when I want to finish my night's sleep, and she's already freaked the hell out and is ready to toss me out of the house because I should have fixed it in my sleep, maybe?