missing pointer

when my laptop comes out of hibernation, the pointer is missing. I have to touch a key for it to appear. Any ideas why?

Same here on my new Acer ES-571. I assumed it was because I had been mucking around with the driver to try and get the gesture scrolling working as it did on my old Acer laptop. Need to use the keys to get the Restart option to get it back. Fortunately it is a helluva lot quicker to reboot than my old machine.

I would avoid Windows hibernation. A lot of hardware/software doesn't play well with it and it can brick SSDs (as I found out to my cost).

Just changed Hibernate to Never (0 minutes) in Advanced Power Options to see if that avoids lost pointer syndrome.

Seems to have "cured" the problem for me without any noticeable impact on battery usage in standby. I generally close all apps down before closing the lid so I am not sure that hibernate mode was doing anything for me anyway.

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

I would avoid Windows hibernation. A lot of hardware/software doesn't play well with it and it can brick SSDs (as I found out to my cost).

I have a UPS, with APC PowerChute s/w running on the PC. If the mains power fails, PowerChute hibernates the PC. This setup has been in place for some years now.

My new PC has an SSD C: and I am concerned re. your comment above. Any links to resources on this matter? My understanding was that hibernation was to be avoided only because of SSD wear, but that is not an issue here because power cuts are so infrequent. (The Power Options are configured to hibernate after > 1 day, which never happens in practice.)

JPL

Edited by deleted (Mon 11-May-15 11:47:41)

I have never found any definitive info and it's a fairly old problem (2011) - see Sandforce Identifies Firmware Bug.

I bought an OCZ SSD three years ago and plugged it into my Windows 7 laptop as an experiment. Everything was fine at first and the SSD really put new life into an old 1.2GHz Celeron machine. I decided to try out hibernate mode and the SSD went into a panic mode that rendered it useless (and with no possibility of a firmware upgrade). I replaced the old HDD and by the time I found out what the problem was, the SSD was out of guarantee and OCZ had gone bust.

The lock-up was caused by firmware problems in the Sandforce controllers that are used by a lot of SSD manufacturers, not just OCZ. It is supposed to have been fixed so you may have nothing to worry about. Even so, I shall be very cautious the next time I buy an SSD, and why use hibernate mode when it takes only a few seconds to boot from an SSD?

Thanks - that was helpful.

I use hibernate only via PowerChute in the event of mains supply failure, not in normal usage. The PC is a desktop.

JPL

I've found TWEAK-SSD, here, an extremely useful tool to optimize use of SSD drives.

I've heard of it but in my case, the drive really is dead and will not respond to any commands. It is not even recognised by the BIOS. Thanks, anyway.