The Driver Power State Failure Error is yet another error which appears during BSOD or Blue screen of death on Windows 10 and Windows 8 PCs. The Driver Power State Failure error mostly occur due to a corrupted or outdated driver for any hardware device that your system may have. The Driver Power State Failure error can usually be fixed with a simple restart. However, in case, the restart couldn’t fix the driver power state failure error you may need to try alternate fixes. There are quite a few solutions to fix Driver Power State Failure Error in Windows. However, it is not necessary that any of the below-listed fixes may work for you. Because the fix for the problem is highly dependent on what is causing the Driver Power State Failure Error in your system. Causes of Driver Power State Failure Error? The reason is simple, and it starts and end with one of the drivers related to your System’s hardware. However, the fix can be different based on the kind of driver is affected. Types of Driver Power State Failure Error: Internet Connectivity problem WiFi status showing connection available – not connected Unable to boot Windows Graphics Card Driver Problem Fix Driver Power State Failure Error As I said earlier, there are several fixes that you can try to solve the driver power state failure error. I have listed the possible fixes for driver power state failure error below. Apply them and see if you can repair the problem and get it resolved. Update your Drivers You must have read this on other threads and forums while searching for driver power state failure error fix. However, I would like to repeat it again, that you should update your drivers first when you face the driver power state failure error. To update your drivers, do the following. To do this go to Control Panel >> System and Security >> System and from the left side, click on Device Manager to open it. Now expand and check each category of devices. If you see a Yellow exclamation mark in front of any device then right-click on it and select update drivers. You can also refer Windows 10 Drivers Guide – Update / Uninstall / Roll Back Driver to Previous Version to know more about how to update drivers in Windows 10. Once the latest drivers are downloaded and installed, restart your PC and see if the error is resolved. Still the error persists? Check out the fixes given below. But, before that learn how to find problematic driver and devices causing the driver power state failure error. How to Find Problematic Driver or Device? After every crash or Blue Screen of Death, Windows automatically creates a log file called MiniDump file and saves the crash report in it. So, to find the exact information about the problematic driver, you have to access the minidump file. The MiniDump has the extension of .DMP which can be read using a program called BlueScreenView. Here is what you should do. After the crash, you can locate the minidump file by going to C:\Windows\Minidump. To view the file, download BlueScreenView utility and run it. Next, select the recent minidump file and open it from Bluescreenview to view which driver is causing the driver power state failure error in Windows 10. Once you find the problematic driver, uninstall it from the Device Manager. Alternatively, you can also download another utility called Whocrashed. Upon running WhoCrashed automatically detects the recent minidump file which you can read to find the problematic driver or device. Fix 1: Driver Power State Failure Error Due to Connectivity One reason you are facing the driver power state failure error in Windows could be related to the power management options you have selected. Ethernet or Wireless drivers may go to low power state to save power when they are in the idle state. Later when it has to wake up, the device may not respond resulting in driver power state failure error. It usually happens if you haven’t restarted your PC for a long period or if the concerned device driver is outdated. To fix this issue what you can do is update the concerned driver to its latest available version. You can typically find the latest updates for your drivers on the manufacturer’s website. So, visit your PC maker’s site, select your PC model and see if there is any update available for the drivers. If there are no new drivers found then trying putting your PC in high-performance mode. This would stop devices and drivers going into low power state when they are not being used or in the idle state. Method 1: Put System on High-Performance Mode To change your Power Plan, go to Control Panel>> Hardware and Sound >> Power Options. Under Choose or Customize Power Plan, click on Show Additional Plans. Click and select High Performance from the option. Do adjust your screen brightness if you want. Method 2: Restart WLAN Autoconfig If the error is related to your ethernet or WiFi issues, you may see WiFi status showing connection available – not connected. If you see the error connection available – not connected try these steps. In the search/Cortana bar type Computer Management and open Computer Management from the search result. It will open a new Computer Management dialogue box. Click and select Services and Application at the bottom. Click Services and from the right side look for a service named WLAN AutoConfig. Right-click on WLAN Autoconfig and select Restart from the options. If you get a timeout error, try again until it successfully restarts. Now restart your PC and see if the error driver power state failure has been resolved. Method 3: Turn off Power Management for Wireless Device If the above fix didn’t work for you, then try turning off Power Management Plan for Wireless Device. To do this go to Control Panel >> System and Security >> System and from the left side, click on Device Manager to open it. Under Device Manager, look for Network Adapters and expand it. Right-click on the Wireless Network Adapter and select Properties. From the Properties window, open Power Management tab. Uncheck the box “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power“. Click OK to save the settings and close the Device Manager window. Next, restart your PC and see if the driver power state failure error is fixed. Fix 2: Restore Windows to Earlier Point in Time Recently I wrote a tutorial explaining System Restore in Windows 10 and how to create and do a system restore in Windows 10. The System Restore is created by a feature called System Protection, and it saves a copy of all your registry and system files except personal data as Restore Point. In case you are facing the driver power state failure error, the system restore may come to the rescue. If the driver power state failure error started to occur very recently and your system was doing fine few days ago, then you probably might have a system restore point created previous week. The system restore creation process happens each week automatically. So, you don’t need to worry about not have created a manual restore point previously. Follow the steps given below to restore Windows to an earlier point in time and fix driver power state failure error. Follow this article >> Restore Windows 10 to Earlier Point in time >> for detailed steps by step guide on how to do it. Once done, restart your PC and you should have fixed driver power state failure error. Why would system restore work in this situation? The error driver power state failure occurs mostly because of a faulty driver. Now the possibility is that one of the hardware device driver attached to your PC might have malfunctioned or got corrupted recently and you are facing this BSOD error. If you have a system restore which was created before the PC started to throw driver power state failure error, then you can use that restore point to bring your PC back to the state where it was working fine. Fix 3: Do Note Use More Than One Anti-Virus/Malware App/Programs Having two guards for the security of your home is a better idea, and it goes well with the quote “more the better”. However, this is not true for your system. You should not have more than one anti-virus installed on your PC at any point in time. Having more than one anti-virus is a known cause for the driver power state failure error. So, if you have more than one anti-virus/malware apps installed, uninstall anyone of them or if required both temporarily. Once the driver power state failure error has been resolved, install any one of them for keeping your system secure from malware. If the issue persists, kindly uninstall anti-Virus and try Microsoft’s own Security Essential or any other Anti-virus that you haven’t installed yet. Fix 4: Manually Find and Remove – Reinstall Problematic Drive in Safe Mode In order to fix driver power state failure error in Windows 8 and Windows 10, you must restart the computer in Safe Mode, find the driver causing the error and reinstall it. You can find the exact driver causing the problem by reading the Minidump file as mentioned in the article earlier. However to uninstall the driver, you may need to restart Windows in Safe Mode. You can start Windows in Safe Mode by pressing the F8 key repeatedly while restarting your PC. As soon as the black screen appears, begin pressing F8 Key to get Advanced Boot Options. From the advanced boot option, select Safe Mode and hit enter. It will start Windows in Safe Mode. Once started in Safe Mode, log in to Windows 10 computer with administrator account. Now you have to open Device Manager. To do this go to Control Panel >> System and Security >> System and from the left side, click on Device Manager to open it. On the Device Manager window, click and expand the category of the device that has issues. Next, right-click on the problematic driver and select Uninstall to uninstall the driver. Confirm the driver uninstallation if asked to by clicking OK. Once uninstalled, restart your Windows 10 PC normally. F8 Does not Work on My PC? Pressing F8 at the time of restarting your computer should bring the Advanced Boot Options menu. In case, the F8 key is not working for you, here are methods to start Windows 10/8 in Safe Mode. Boot into Windows 10. Once logged in, press Windows Key R. It will open Run dialogue box. Inside the box, type msconfig and hit enter. It will open System Configuration window. Click and open the Boot tab on System Configuration window. Under Boot tab, click and check Safe Boot under boot options. Click Apply and then click OK. If asked to restart, select Restart Now. Now when the PC restarts it will restart in Safe Mode.
