There are several different kinds of the Blue Screen of Death errors, commonly known as BSOD errors that can occur in Windows 11. One of the such Blue Screen errors is the DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE error which can happen for a number of reasons such as incompatible drivers, damaged system files, incorrect power settings, faulty hardware, malware, amongst other reasons.
When you encounter the Blue Screen error in Windows 11, don’t panic. All blue screen errors will look similar and show you the same message – “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We’re just collecting some error info and then we’ll restart it for you.” But each error has a different code that how you’ll identify what kind of error is it. If you see the Stop error code – DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE and/or 0x0000009F, it means this is Driver Power State Failure Blue screen error.
Driver Power State Failure error usually arises when there is a corrupted or incompatible device driver installed in your computer or due to incorrect power settings. The BSOD usually pops up when you wake up the system from the Sleep or Hibernation mode or when booting up the system.
Most of the time a simple restart will fix the issue, however, you can still use the following fixes to prevent the error from happening in the future. Let’s see what causes the driver power state failure error in Windows 11 and what are ways you can solve it.
Causes for Driver Power State Failure Error
Windows throws the ‘Driver power state failure’ error when it a sends signal to wake up the driver (when needed) and it fails to come out of sleep at all or the driver takes too long to respond.
This error often occurs during system startup, restart, wake up from sleep or hibernation, shut down as well as when the driver switches to sleep mode while the device is still in the use and doesn’t respond. Knowing common causes of the driver power state failure error can help you narrow down the particular problem and figure out which troubleshooting method should you use to fix it.
Here are some of the common causes responsible for the error:
- Outdated, faulty, or incompatible drivers
- Upgrading the Windows with the old drivers
- Downgrading the drivers
- Unfavorable Power settings
- Hardware faults
- Sudden power state transitions (like shutdown, moving in or out of sleep or hibernation)
- Multiple driver installations for a single device
- Incompatible hardware
- Driver entering sleep mode while the device is in use
- Third-party software or antivirus
- Device drivers with invalid digital signatures
Restart Your PC to Fix Driver Power State Failure Error
Most of the time when this error happens, you can easily fix it by simply restarting your PC. When a device driver goes to sleep while you are still using the device, it results in the Driver Power State Failure error. So restarting the computer clears the memory and re-initializes all the devices connected to your computer.
Perform Startup Repair from Advanced Options
Sometimes you may encounter the Driver Power State Failure or the Blue Screen error when Windows starts up, so Windows won’t start up properly or you may not be able to log in to your PC. When that happens, you have no choice but to fix this problem with startup repair or from the safe mode.
To access the Startup Repair from the Advanced Options, you will need to boot your computer from a Windows installation media (USB or DVD). If you don’t know how to create Windows 11 bootable media, check out this article to learn how to do that.
First, boot your computer from the Windows 11 bootable media. If you do that, you will see the Windows Setup screen where you will have two options: ‘Install’ and ‘Repair your Computer’. Now, click the ‘Repair your Computer’ option at the lower-left corner of the Window.
This will open up the Choose an option screen (Windows Recovery Environment), here, select the ‘Troubleshoot’ option.
In the next screen, click the ‘Advanced options’ option.
Now, select the ‘Startup Repair’ option as shown below.
Method 2:
If you don’t know have bootable Windows Installation media, there’s another trick that you can use to access the Windows Recovery Environment. Here’s how you can do that:
First, restart or start your computer, and as soon as you see the loading screen, hold the power button for 5 sec to shut down the computer. Keep repeating the same process three to four times until you enter the Windows Recovery Environment window.
Here, click the ‘Advanced options’ button.
Then, select the ‘Startup Repair’ option.
Once you do that, Windows will restart automatically, scan for errors, and fixes them.
Method 3:
Alternatively, you can also access Advanced options from the Windows Settings. Here’s how you can do this:
Click the Start menu and search for ‘Recovery options’ and select the best-matched result. Or open Settings and select the ‘Recovery’ option in the System tab.
In the Recovery settings page, click the ‘Restart now’ option next to Advanced startup.
This will reboot your computer and show the Windows Recovery Environment, from here you can navigate to the ‘Startup repair’ option as we did in the above method.
Enter Safe Mode
If your PC boot into the blue screen or the Driver Power State Failure, you can start your computer in Safe Mode and troubleshoot the problem using any of the following fixes. There are a few different ways you can enter the Safe mode. If you don’t know how to enter the boot mode, follow these steps:
Safe mode is a diagnostic mode that enables users to start the computer in a basic state with only the essential drivers, programs, and files. It will not start the drivers and program (like Graphics driver, audio driver, etc) that normally causes the Driver Power State errors. So enabling the safe mode allows you to narrow down the source of the issues and can help you fix them.
Method 1:
First, boot your system from the Windows 11 bootable media or using the Advanced Startup. Then follow the same steps in the above method to get to the ‘Advanced Options’ in the Windows Recovery Environment. Then, select the ‘Startup Settings’ option.
On the next screen, click the ‘Restart’ to change the Windows options.
After that, your system will restart and show you the following screen. Here, press the number key 4 or F4 to enter the safe mode.
Once the system is booted into Safe mode, you can try and fix the problem that’s causing the BSOD error. Also, Safe Mode is the best way to uninstall some newly added drivers.
Method 2:
You can also enter boot mode using boot options in the System Configuration tool.
Open the Run command by pressing Win+R, type msconfig, and press Enter. You can also search for ‘System Configuration in the Windows search and open it.
In the System Configuration tool, switch to the ‘Boot’ tab and check the ‘Safe boot’ option under the Boot options section. Then, select the ‘Minimal’ option under it, and click ‘OK’.
After that, click the ‘Restart’ button to reboot the PC and enter into safe mode.
Update Your System Drivers
As we mentioned before, one of the common causes for Driver Power State Failure error is the outdated or incompatible drivers. So we recommend updating drivers of the devices that are more likely to cause the problem like display drivers, graphics drivers, external device drivers, etc. There are three different ways you can update drivers in Windows 11 – Device Manager, Windows update, and manual download and install.
Update Drivers using Device Manager
Device Manager tool can scan for driver changes and install new versions of the drivers. To open Device Manager, right-click on the Start menu select ‘Device manager’ or open the Run command box, and type devmgmt.msc and press Enter.
It will open up the Device Manager which will list all the drivers installed in your system categorized by hardware. Now, locate the driver that’s causing the problem and update it. Sometimes malfunctioning drivers will have a yellow triangle mark (a warning sign), make sure you should update those drivers. Graphics or Video drivers are usually located under the Display adaptors category.
If the graphics driver is the one causing the problem, expand the Display adaptor, right-click on the installed driver and select the ‘Update driver’.
This will open up the ‘Update drivers’ dialog box, select the ‘Search automatically for drivers’ option.
Now, Windows will automatically search for the driver and update it on your computer. If prompted, restart the computer to complete the installation.
Update Windows Update
Another way to install or update the necessary drivers is through Windows updates. Updating Windows not only updates or installs device drivers but can also fix other issues in your computer.
Click the Start menu and select ‘Settings’ or press Win+I.
In the Windows Settings, select the ‘Windows Update’ tab on the left pane and click the ‘Check for updates’ button.
Now, Window will search, download and install the drivers that are missing or out of date on your computer. Sometimes, Windows Update find and list available drivers and you have to click the ‘Download’ and ‘Install’ button to install them.
If you don’t see any available drivers here, you can check the Optional updates. To do that, click the ‘Advanced options’ on the Windows update setting page.
Next, click the ‘Optional updates’ option under the Additional options section. If you have any driver updates available, they will be listed here. You can download and install the necessary drivers.
Download and Install Drivers from Manufacturer’s Website
If you are not able to updates drivers using the above two methods, you can manually download the correct drivers from the manufacturer’s website or a trusted source.
Visit the manufacturer’s website and download the drivers for the correct device. Drivers are usually found on the ‘Drivers and support’ page on the manufacturer’s website.
Then, make sure to download the latest version and Windows 11 edition of the driver.
If you can’t find the manufacturer’s website, you can search for the driver in search engine (Google) by typing the ‘Device name’, followed by ‘Windows 11’, followed by ‘driver download’. If you have a laptop, you can search for the laptop name and model. From the search results, go to a trusted website and download and install the driver.
After updating the drivers, check if the driver power state failure error is fixed in Windows 11.
You can update drivers using third-party driver updater tools such as Driver Booster, Driver Talent, Driver Easy, etc.
Uninstall Device Drivers
If updating the driver doesn’t fix the problem or if the problem is started after installing a new device driver, then try removing the problematic driver from your computer. In some cases, the recently installed driver may have bugs that can cause this issue. Here’s how you do this:
First, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting ‘Device Manager’. When Device Manager launches, find the driver that’s causing the BSOD error from the list. If you are not sure, check your BSOD dump logs for more info. Then, right-click the device and select ‘Uninstall device’.
In the confirmation box, click the ‘Uninstall’ button.
After uninstalling the driver, reboot the system to automatically reinstall the driver. Or you can also download and install the latest version of the driver for Windows 11 from the manufacturer’s site.
Rollback to Previous Versions of the Newly Installed Drivers
If you started to experience the BSOD error only after installing a new device driver, it’s maybe due to that the new driver has bugs that can cause the issue. In that cases, you can roll back to the previous versions of the installed driver that worked better with the device. Here’s how you can roll back the driver to fix the issue.
Open the Device Manager and find the newly installed device driver that you think is causing the BSOD error. Then, right-click that driver and select ‘Properties’.
In the driver properties window, switch to the ‘Driver’ tab and click the ‘Roll Back Driver’ button.
In the confirmation dialog box, select one of the appropriate options, then click ‘Yes’ to roll back to the previous driver.
Now, check and see if this fixed the problem, if not try the next method.
Change Power Settings
Another best way to deal with Driver Power State Failure error is to change the power settings because the issue could be caused by some active settings in the Power Options. So you need to disable sleep, hibernate, and fast startup settings in Windows 11. Here’s how you can do that:
Open the Start menu and type ‘Control Panel’ and select the best match result.
When the control panel launches, click the ‘System and Security’ settings if the view is Category. Or, if the view is set to small icons or large icons, choose ‘Power Options’.
Then, click the ‘Power Options’ from the list of settings.
From the left panel, click the ‘Choose what the power button does’ link.
Next, click on ‘Change settings that are currently unavailable’ to edit the settings. Remember you’ll need administrative privileges to do this.
Now uncheck ‘Turn on fast startup’, ‘Sleep’, ‘Hibernate’ options and click ‘Save changes’ and reboot the computer.
Change the Power Plan and Power Plan Settings
If your device is using the ‘Power Saver’ plan, make sure to change it to ‘Balanced’ or ‘High Performance’. Then adjust the Wireless Adaptor’s Power saving mode to ‘Maximum performance’.
Go to the ‘Power Options’ settings in the Control panel and ensure the ‘Balanced (recommended)’ or ‘High Performance’ plan is selected. Then, click ‘Change plan settings’ next to the selected plan.
Next, set the ‘Put the computer to sleep’ setting for both ‘On battery’ and ‘Plugged in’ to ‘Never’ and select ‘Save changes’
After that, click the ‘Change advanced power settings’ link under it.
This will open the Power Options dialog box where you can customize various power settings of the PC. Now, locate the ‘Wireless Adapter Settings’ option and expand it. Then, expand the ‘Power Saving Mode’ under it and set both On battery and Plugged in settings to ‘Maximum Performance’.
Then, click on ‘Apply’ and then, ‘OK’ to apply the changes you made.
Now, restart your computer to see if the Driver Power State Failure error is fixed. If this doesn’t work, try the next fix.
Adjust Energy-Saving Mode Of Graphics Card (Nvidia Control Panel)
If you have an Nvidia graphics card, the BSOD error could be related to the power settings of the Nvidia graphics driver. You can fix this by making a few changes in the Nvidia Control Panel which is a centralized interface that lets you customize various functions of the Nvidia driver.
First, right-click on the Nvidia icon in the taskbar corner overflow (system tray) and choose ‘Nvidia Control Panel’. Or you can search for it (Nvidia Control Panel) in the Windows search and open it.
In the Nvidia Control Panel, click the ‘Manage 3D settings’ in the left pane.
On the right pane, change the ‘Preferred graphics processor’ to your dedicated graphics card (High-Performance Nvidia processor).
In the list of settings below, find the ‘Power Management mode’ setting and set it as ‘Prefer maximum performance’ from the drop-down menu.
Now, click ‘Apply’ to save the changes and close the control panel.
Change Device’s Power Settings
If the above method doesn’t work, you can temporarily disable the power saver option for the devices that might be causing the error. Follow these steps to do that:
Open Device Manager by typing devmgmt.msc and clicking ‘OK’. Then, right-click on the device and select ‘Properties’ from the context menu.
Next, switch to the ‘Power Management’ tab in the properties windows and uncheck the ‘Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power option’.
Then, click ‘OK’ to save the changes. After that, restart the computer and check if the 0x0000009F error is fixed.
Run SFC Scan (System File Checker)
System File Checker (SFC) is a built-in command tool that is used to scan the system files for corrupt or damaged system files and replace them. In the event of a Blue screen death error, you can run an SFC scan to fix the error. This is how you run the SFC scan:
Search for ‘Command Prompt’ in the Windows search and choose ‘Run as Administrator’ in the search results to open the terminal with administrative privileges.
When Command prompt terminal opens, enter the below command and press Enter:
sfc /scannowThe SFC scan will take some time to complete, so make sure you don’t close the Command Prompt until it does.
If the scan detects any damaged or corrupt system files, it should repair or replace them. Once the scan is complete, reboot your system and check if the Driver Power State Failure error is eliminated. If not, try the DISM (Deployment Image Servicing and Management) commands below.
Run DISM Commands
DISM (Deployment Image Servicing and Management) is another command tool used to restore damaged or missing files on your system, which is more powerful than System File Checker. It can also be used to fix the Driver Power State Failure errors.
Open Command prompt with administrative privileges and type the following commands one after the other:
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /scanhealthDISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth
The first command scans the computer and detects issues. Then the second command repair or restore the corrupted or missing files. After that restart your computer.
Disable Third-Party Antivirus Program and Windows Defender
Sometimes your antivirus program can interfere with important Windows files or driver files and can cause the Driver Power State Failure error to appear. So disabling the third-party antivirus program or/and the Windows Defender could solve the issue.
Open your Antivirus program disable the real-time protection. To disable Windows Defender, use the below steps:
Open Windows Security and click on the ‘Virus & threat protection’ section on the left panel.
Then, click the ‘Manage settings’ link under the Virus & threat protection settings section.
Then, turn off the toggle under ‘Real-time protection’ to disable the antivirus temporarily.
This will turn off the antivirus protection temporarily and may solve your Driver Power State Failure.
Update the BIOS
BIOS or UEFI is a basic firmware that enables your operating system to communicate with the device’s hardware. Updating your BIOS (or UEFI) can help solve many PC-related problems, however, it is quite risky and can go wrong sometimes and brink your computer. So, be very careful when installing (or flashing) updates for the BIOS.
Most BIOS updates for modern computers can be installed with a simple installer from Windows. But for some PC you have to install or flash BIOS in the BIOS menu.
Go to your motherboard or PC manufacturer’s website and download the latest BIOS update or BIOS EZ flash utility.
But before you do that, check your current BIOS version and Date. If you have the latest BIOS version, no need to update or install BIOS. But if you have the older version and there’s a new version of BIOS available on the website, you can download and install it.
To check your BIOS version, type in ‘System Information’ in the Windows search and open the tool.
In the System Information window, locate for ‘BIOS Version/Date’ item and note its corresponding version and date.
If the BIOS update is available as an installer on the manufacturer’s website, then download and install that.
However, if the BIOS is only available as a flash file, download that file, extract the compressed file, and copy it to a folder in a USB drive. Then follow these steps to install it:
Now, connect the USB drive to the computer and reboot the system. When the computer boots up, press F2, F10, F12, or Del keys on your keyboard to launch the BIOS UEFI menu. Each computer has a different shortcut key to open the BIOS menu, but most PC uses the above shortcuts.
In BIOS utility, open the ‘Advanced’ or ‘Advanced Mode’ option.
In the Advanced tab, look for the ‘Flash’ or ‘EZ flash’ or other firmware update option and select it.
On the next screen, navigate to your USB drive and select the new firmware image you saved on that drive. The installation should take some time but during the process make sure not to interrupt the process or turn off your PC, or you could brick your computer. If you are using a laptop make sure to plug it into the power before you begin the process.
Uninstall the Recently Installed Softwares
If you started to experience the Driver_Power_State_Failure error only after installing certain software or program, then uninstall that software. Some programs are not compatible with system drivers or configurations which can cause the blue screen error.
To uninstall the software, open the Settings app, click ‘Apps’ on the left pane, and select ‘Apps and features’ on the right.
From the list of apps, locate the app you want to uninstall, click the vertical ellipsis (three dots) button and click ‘Uninstall’.
Remove External Devices
If you have multiple external peripherals connected to your computer (like Speaker, Web camera, scanner, printer, etc.), then try disconnecting the devices and see if that fixes the problem.
First, turn off your system, disconnect all the devices, and restart your computer. If your computer runs without any error or problem after that, then plug the devices back into the computer one by one and test them each time to find which one causes the problem.
Use System Restore to Rollback Drivers or Undo System Changes
Some drivers don’t show Roll back driver option in the Driver properties, in that case, you can use the System Restore to roll back drivers. System Restore can also undo the recent changes or system corruption that may be causing the error.
Click the Start menu and search for ‘System restore’ in the Windows search and select the ‘Create a restore point’ control panel in the result.
When the System Properties control panel, click the ‘System Restore’ button.
In the System Restore tool, select the ‘Choose a different restore point’ option and click ‘Next’.
In the next window, you will see a list of system restore points, choose the right one and select ‘Next’. If you see the installed problematic driver here, choose that restore point or before that and click ‘Next’.
Run The Driver Verifier To Check Your Drivers
Driver Verifier is a built-in utility that is used to detect and troubleshoot many driver issues. If the Driver Power State Failure issue is caused by malfunctioning drivers, then the Driver verifier can help you figure out which driver is causing the problem. Let us see how you can verify drivers:
First, search for ‘Command Prompt’ in the Windows search and click on ‘Run as Administrator’ under the result.
In the command prompt, type in the command Verifier and press Enter to execute it.
Now, the Driver Verifier Manager window will appear. Here, select ‘Create standard settings’ and click ‘Next’.
To check all the drivers installed on your PC, select the ‘Automatically select all drivers installed on this computer’, and click ‘Finish’.
To scan only the specific drivers, select the ‘Select driver names from a list’ option and click ‘Finish’.
Then, select the drivers you want to scan and click ‘Finish’.
Then, in the prompt box click ‘OK’ and then restart the computer to scan the drivers.
After you restart your computer the Driver Verifier will run in the background and diagnose the drivers. To know which driver failed or caused the problem, open the Device Verifier Manager again, ‘Display information about the currently verified drivers’ option, and click ‘Next’.
Once you scanned drivers and eliminated the faulty driver, make sure to stop or disable the Driver Verifier Manager process or else it will overload your system and lead it to crash. Driver Verifier Manager will run in the background on every start and until you stop it.
To stop the Driver Verifier Manager, launch the tool again, select the ‘Delete existing settings’ option and click the ‘Finish’ button,
Then, restart the PC.
Reset Your PC (Last Resort)
If none of the above methods worked, then you can reset your Windows PC to fix the Driver Power State Failure blue screen error. Resetting Windows will reinstall the Windows 11 OS from the backup image or cloud service. When reinstalling Windows, you can choose to keep your personal files while removing all the apps and settings.
This method will remove all the third-party apps, drivers, and settings. The computer will be restored to the default state when you installed the OS. Follow these instructions to reset your Windows 11 PC:
Open the Windows 11 Settings app by pressing Win+I. In the Settings app, choose the ‘System’ tab, and on the right, scroll down and click the ‘Recovery’ option.
Under the Recovery options section, click the ‘Reset PC’ button.
This opens the Reset this PC dialog box, where you can choose whether you want to ‘Keep your files’ but remove apps and settings or ‘Remove everything’ including your personal files from the libraries. Select an option out of the two.
Next, choose how would you like to reinstall Windows – whether with a local backup image from your device or Cloud download and reinstall Windows. If you choose ‘Cloud download’, it will download and reinstall the latest build of Windows 11 but it will need internet and 4GB of data. But if you choose ‘Local reinstall’, it will reinstall the same build of the OS from the backup image in the device.
In the next windows, click the ‘Next’ button.
Finally, click the ‘Reset’ button to start the resetting process.
The process will take some to finish and will automatically restart the system to a fresh OS.
We hope this article helps you get rid of the driver power state failure error in your device.
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