Unsolved sleep & hibernate issue in Windows 8/8.1 issue – 03/11/2014

The problem:
    When the system is completely built and service packed with all the current updates in 8.1 it has issues coming out of sleep mode.  The usual situation is that the user wakes the screen and they will see a black screen, the windows logon background, the logon screen and on some occasions it will freeze as the user types in their password.

Here is a link to just one thread at Microsoft with users having sleep/hibernate issues.

The workaround:
    First solution change the power management settings to never sleep.  This solves the issue of the computer freezing but defeats the idea of being energy efficient.
    
    Second solution use a Nvidia video card rather than an ATI chip.

General Info:
    After initial build of windows 8 and 8.1 the system seems to work correctly. Sleep function OK.  The 1st system ran fine for 2 months and just before the user took the 8.1 update he started having some issues but they were not every single time.  After the update to 8.1 it gradually got worse until the failure is so regular that the only solution at the time was to turn off the sleep feature.

    Second system I had the opportunity to reformat several times before turning it over to the customer.  This build went the same way as the first it seems to be OK through the Windows 8.0 install.  After the initial upgrade to 8.1 the system still seemed to sleep correctly. After updating the video chips we seemed to be still good to go. After several updates the system seemed good.  While working on the system I tool the last Microsoft updates and that was it. Now the sleep mode fails. I repeated this process and did all of the updates and did not introduce the ATI drivers, but it still failed after the last few Microsoft Updates.  Now the system that was no longer working correctly I installed an older NVidia 9600 card and suddenly the sleep mode worked correctly.  I ordered a GT 660 and it continued to working for the customer.  The issue is I still have one system with an ATI card that is not working and need a good solution for the customer. 

More info we did update the bios of the Motherboard and downloaded the newest drivers from ATI with no success.  Also, even after trying to force the new drivers we kept noticing that the Microsoft drivers kept trying to load. 
Asus technical support has assisted us and because all works OK with the NVidia card it does not seem to be a failing board.  The ATI video cards are from different manufacturers.

I have an ongoing Twitter conversation with Microsoft Support but still no concrete solutions.

@MicrosoftHelps Sometimes after sleep the logon screen appears normal and as you type the password in it stops responding.

— Steven Suslick (@gotavirusbug) February 28, 2014

If any one has any good solutions please leave comments on the blog site.