Fix: DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE Blue Screen
When Windows BSODs trying to enter or leave sleep, a driver is usually failing to handle the power transition. A calm overview to fixing it.
What This Code Tells You
DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE appears when a driver fails to respond correctly during a power transition — going into sleep, waking from sleep, hibernating, or returning from hibernation. The stop screen names the file responsible.
On laptops, the most common offenders are graphics drivers, Wi-Fi drivers, and chipset drivers. Each has to coordinate carefully with Windows during sleep, and an out-of-date or buggy driver fails to participate properly.
The Standard Recovery Path
Update the driver named in the stop screen. If the named file is generic (something like ntoskrnl.exe), look at the Reliability Monitor for nearby driver-related events around the same time as the blue screen — those usually identify the genuine culprit.
Also try updating chipset, graphics, and network drivers as a group. Power-management code spans these subsystems, and an inconsistency between them is a common cause.
- Update the driver named in the stop screen
- Refresh chipset, graphics, and network drivers together
- Look at Reliability Monitor for related events
If Sleep Still Crashes
Use the Powercfg command-line tool to generate a power report: 'powercfg /sleepstudy' produces an HTML report listing every recent sleep transition and any errors encountered. The report often points directly at the misbehaving device.
If the report shows nothing useful, disabling fast-startup (Control Panel → Power Options → 'Choose what the power buttons do' → uncheck Turn on fast startup) often resolves the most stubborn DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE cases.
Quick Answers
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions readers send us most often on this topic.
A driver is failing to respond correctly when Windows tries to wake it. Update the relevant driver and check Powercfg sleep studies.
If sleep BSODs persist after driver updates, yes — disable it temporarily and see whether the issue resolves.
A detailed HTML report of recent sleep activity, including failures and the devices that caused them.
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