To close everything up here, after about 3 hours sleep and another pot of coffee, this morning I ran through the thread again.
@kelper Excellent suggestion of using Linux and, I did that. Yes, the problem remained which is more substantiation it's a flaky piece of hardware.
@fireberd It may very well be due to the lack of Dell's proprietary power plan that was removed when I did a clean install of 10 and doesn't exist in Linux, but that plan did exist when it was on 11. I'll never know now.
@Try3 Denis I wish you could have gotten into the thread earlier because No, I didn't know to try your sleep transitions trick. I can't answer if it had been converted from S0 to S3. I suspected from the get-go it would be S0 related since it's an all in one and the first thing I checked was what sleep state was used. I was surprised to see S3 available, S0 not supported.
I left it with Sleep=off, turn display off after 10 min and the owner picked it up already. At least it's usable. Hopefully, if this is a hardware problem, whatever piece of hardware is the cause won't degrade further because this is a really strong running machine.
The sun is shining, it's 70 degrees, spring flowers are blooming, and the birds are singing. This one has tested me so I'm going to chill in my backyard and put this mess behind me.
You guys are great and I'll make my very own sleep troubleshooting guide from your helpful suggestions. I hope I can return the favor sometime.
