Unpredictable MBP wake from sleep in Windows 7 Boot Camp

Question

I have a Macbook Pro with Windows 7 installed in Boot Camp. I have serious problems with waking from sleep and not sure why. I have the default Balanced power plan selected.

Many times when I close the laptop and leave it for more than just a few minutes, when I open it back up, it does not awake immediately. I often end up having to press the power button just to get it to wake up. Sometimes this causes it to wake up in Windows mode, sometimes it reboots completely, sometimes the battery has been drained and Windows has to restart (and gives me the Windows did not shut down properly message). Is this a common problem with Boot Camp? Can I fix it?

here's some links i found with people experience similar problems

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2328054&tstart=15
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10933649&#10933649
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2330836&start=0&tstart=0
http://www.bhall.com/2010/02/fix-closing-macbook-lid-shutdown-issues.html

Answer 1

EDIT:

Changing the following setting definitely helped, it slept through the night but I just experienced a random wake up.

Device Manager -> Network adapters -> "broadcom" device -> Properties -> Power management -> Uncheck "Allow device to wake computer from sleep"

Also disable the Apple Bluetooth radio from allowing the computer to wake up.

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I have exactly the same problem and have not found a solution online.

I did find this great website with some tips on how to troubleshoot the problem. (It's for Vista but all the tips should work for Windows 7)

I'm trying them now - I will let you know how they go.

Answer 2

I had this exact problem within my Bootcamp on Windows 10 and now my Bootcamp sleep is working perfectly. SOLUTION: The computer needs to have the same Startup Disk specified on both Bootcamp and Mac OS X.

In Bootcamp, go to the Boot Camp Control panel and select the startup disk and click OK.

Right click on the Boot Camp Control panel and Restart in OS X. Once there, go to Preferences...Startup Disk and set the same startup disk.

Reboot, go into Bootcamp and reboot again for good measure. Then go into Bootcamp and test out the sleep function to verify that it is fixed.

Note that in my case, when I got to the OS X Startup Disk screen, BOOTCAMP was not even an option. The only icon was for the Mac partition. I found this blog post where it mentioned that Tuxera NTFS can cause this problem. After disabling Tuxera and rebooting, the Bootcamp disk appeared as an option and I was able to select it.

If you're like me, you're thinking that this shouldn't have anything to do with Bootcamp's sleeping problems. Here's a couple blog posts that confirm the fix.

http://blog.ovesens.net/2013/09/macbook-air-sleep-mode-not-working/

http://osxdaily.com/2011/04/05/how-i-fixed-my-macbook-air-11-6-wake-from-sleep-problems/

*I was lazy and grabbed the screenshots off google to illustrate

Answer 3

Which MacBook Pro do you have, exactly? Use System Profiler in Mac OS X to get the Model Identifier. It'll be something like "MacBookProX,Y". Windows 7 under Boot Camp is not supported on certain models of MacBook Pro. I don't know if that means it actually won't install, or if Apple has decided that there were problems that weren't worth working around, so decided to simply declare those configurations unsupported.

Which version of Windows 7 did you install, exactly? The MacBook Pro models supported by 64-bit Windows 7 is more restrictive than the models that support 32-bit Windows.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1846

What version of Boot Camp did you use to get Windows 7 installed onto your MacBook Pro? Boot Camp 3.1 is the first that officially supported Windows 7. If you managed to get Windows 7 installed under a previous version of Boot Camp, you might not have the latest Apple-qualified Windows 7 drivers for your MacBook Pro's chips. You might need to update your driver set to the ones that came with Boot Camp 3.1.

Also, be sure you've applied all applicable firmware updates to your MacBook Pro:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

More information about Boot Camp and Windows 7 here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3986

Answer 4

I had similar sounding problems with my Macbook (2006 Core Duo) running Windows 7. The computer would sleep/hibernate but when re-opening the lid the screen was dark.

However it turned out the LCD (front?)backlight on the display was not working and you could just about see the screen if you held it up to bright light.

Also I noticed that the usual bootcamp tray icon and brightness/volume keys did not function. I re-installed Bootcamp from Windows (from MacUpdate.com) and it seems fine now.

Answer 5

I had a similar problem, but with more specific conditions, so my answer might not help you ; however I hope it can help someone else.
The problem happened after I started using an Xbox 360 controller to play games on my laptop (games are one of the major reasons I installed Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro :) ).
I noticed the lights around the central button on the controller kept flashing but thought it was OK at first (I could use the controller without problems).
Now every time I closed the laptop and tried to open it later, I had the Windows Error Recovery boot screen, sometimes I got a blue screen too.
Independently I searched how to fix the problem of the light constantly flashing on my controller: it turns out I had to uninstall the driver for the MotionInJoy application.
This incidentally fixed the problems I had with waking from sleep mode.

Answer 6

I have a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo (1st generation of Unibody chassis, with ExpressCard/34 slot. One thing I have noticed under Windows 7 using boot camp, is that if I don’t unplug my USB mouse before closing the display, any nudge to the mouse will cause the machine to return to full active mode, including lighting up the display, (the Apple Logo lights up) even though it is still closed, and it will not return to sleep mode unless I open the lid, enter my password, disconnect the mouse and close it again.

Also, it has been my experience that “Startup Disk” in the Mac OS X utilities and the startup disk option in the Boot Camp settings within Windows 7 both write to the same place when you set one or the other as default.

If your machine is set for Mac OS X as a default, and you use the Alt/Option key at startup to select Boot Camp/Windows, If you put windows to sleep and battery power is lost, due to removal or discharge, the boot code will fall back on the default startup disk (Mac OS X) If Windows was set for the mac equivalent of “Safe Sleep” (go to sleep mode but write hibernation file also) the next time you boot to Windows, the Windows boot code will see the Windows hibernation file, and resume from where you left off.