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�
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

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 2

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 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