Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 does not recover from idle sleeping

I just finished fully updating windows 11 after reinstalling it a little while ago on this Dell Inspiron 7440 14 2-in-1 (something I have now had to do on this computer 3 times in 2025 already after it became unusable on other versions of windows 11.)

After the latest Windows 11 update, if it idles to sleep from lack of use there is a good chance can't recover. I can't figure out what the difference is between the times it can recover and can't recover. When it can't recover it gets stuck on a totally black screen with the mouse cursor, which can move but there is nothing to click on to try and see if any other aspects of the mouse still work. None of the keys or any combination of key presses on the keyboard do anything -- I have spent like 10+ minutes trying. The only way out of that freeze state is to hold down the power button for 10+ seconds until it turns off. Even little taps or shorter presses on the power key don't seem to do anything.

When one turns the computer back on from that state it almost immediately on booting goes to a blue screen and complains that it is missing key startup hardware ... which is weird, its a self-contained laptop and I am not booting it from any external devices nor have I ever set it to do so. There are some options on this blue screen complaining of lacking hardware including "Try again." One can force it to keep trying again and it eventually realizes that actually, yes it has everything it needs to boot up, and then it switches to HD scan and repair. Then it turns off. Then it goes to the blue screen again that insists it is missing critical hardware for startup, but if forced through via "try again" and it doesn't decide to scan and repair the HD it will, blessfully actually boot up, finally.

For now I guess I will disable sleep to prevent this horrible issue, but it feels like sleep shouldn't tank this system, it didn't just before the last update when I was OS Build 26100.3476

Any thoughts from preventing a randomly non-recoverable idel sleep on this laptop?

Oddly, I had a strange issue with recovering from sleep a couple weeks ago, but after a recent update, it was suddenly gone.

Have you tried a repair?

One similar issue I had was fixed using DSIM. Open an admin command window and run the following command. It may take a few minutes to complete.

To open the admin command window, hold the WINDOWS key and press "X", release those keys and press "A".

DSIM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

If it just hangs for more than 10-15 minutes, or finds some problems, close and reopen the command window and try this. If no errors are indicated, skip to the SFC command.

DSIM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

After this completes, run the following command again.

DSIM /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth

It should show no problems this time. If not, you may have to start considering more onerous solutions.

Once the DSIM scan shows no problems, run the following command to repair the running Windows files.

SFC /SCANNOW

See if that solves the problem.

I have two suggestions. Both of these can cause the symptoms you describe, although the blue screen part of it sounds more likely to be item #1 below.

1) Disable Fast Startup. Note that I am NOT talking about the BIOS Fast Startup setting, but in Windows.


2) If you are using a generic display driver (one downloaded from Nvidia, AMD, or Intel), replace it with the driver Dell.

@hsehestedt

Okay, turned off fast startup. Display was Dell driver, so I am going to leave it.

I also updated the BIOS though it was basically up to date. I haven't had any problems yet, but now I need to wait to see if it randomly occurs (or doesn't) and I have no idea how long that will be, and sadly there really can only be proof of continuing issue, and only lack of evidence of solution.

Thanks for the help.

Let us know in the coming days how it's going. Roughly how frequently were you seeing the problem before?