Hi gurus. yes I know of the WinXP group but you have all migrated from
there to here so here I am too.

Win XP Pro. Lenovo T500 laptop. On AC power. On Cat5. WiFi off. On
my LAN / Internet connection.

Boots up and runs fine. Use for an hour or two and then let it sit for
a random amount of time.

I come back and the screen looks fine but I cannot get anything to run.

This has started happening in the last few weeks. Before I had no problems.

"Start" opens but even the "Turn Off Computer" button is dead.
I cannot get anything to start.

I reboot and all is well again for as long as I am active on it.
I have no idea what is causing this.

I have recently started getting a error message on startup:

PWMDBSVC Module has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are
sorry for the inconvenience.

But I cannot track this down or know how to fix this error.

Suggestions please.

"RecentlyOrLately" <RecentlyOrLately@RecentlyOrLately.com> wrote|

| PWMDBSVC Module has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are
| sorry for the inconvenience.
|

I found it on my first search at DDG, first item:

https://www.file.net/process/pwmdbsvc.exe.html

It looks like you could just disable that service.

RecentlyOrLately wrote:

> Hi gurus. yes I know of the WinXP group but you have all migrated
> from there to here so here I am too.

No, not all. There is still traffic in the Windows XP newsgroup. To
see if a newsgroup is still active, post there to ask for comments or
help to see if you get a response.

> Win XP Pro. Lenovo T500 laptop. On AC power. On Cat5. WiFi off.
> On my LAN / Internet connection.
>
> Boots up and runs fine. Use for an hour or two and then let it sit
> for a random amount of time.
>
> I come back and the screen looks fine but I cannot get anything to
> run.
>
> This has started happening in the last few weeks. Before I had no
> problems.
>
> "Start" opens but even the "Turn Off Computer" button is dead. I
> cannot get anything to start.
>
> I reboot and all is well again for as long as I am active on it. I
> have no idea what is causing this.
>
> I have recently started getting a error message on startup:
>
> PWMDBSVC Module has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are
> sorry for the inconvenience.
>
> But I cannot track this down or know how to fix this error.

Tried disabling all power options; i.e., don't let the computer power
down, hibernate, go into standby mode, etc. Keep the computer powered
up all the time until and if you want to shutdown Windows and shutdown
the computer. Sounds like you have some hardware that gets into a
unrecoverable state when put into low-power mode. I ran into that,
didn't want to replace the hardware (a modem), so I just quit letting
the computer drop into a low-power state. In my area, the difference in
cost for powering down or going into low-power state versus leaving it
up all the time was under a couple dollars per year. That was worth the
cost to have immediate use of my computer instead of having to boot up
or resume from low-power state.

PWMDBSVC = Power Management Dynamic Brightness Control service, bundled
with Lenovo.

I've had monitors that wouldn't resume (restore) on coming out of
low-power mode. I had to reboot the computer.

In the Power Option settings in Windows, and instead of disabling them
altogether to leave the computer running full-power for 24x7, you could
just disable powering down the monitor when a low-power scheme engages.

https://is.oregonstate.edu/cn-desktop-support/tech-tips-using-cn/power-management/how-do-i-change-power-settings-my-windows

Since this is a Power Manager utility, it could affect more than just
the monitor. Other hardware might not be coming out of low-power mode,
or in a known state, and cause the hang. Just disable the power
options, and run full-on for a long time to see if the problem goes
away.