How to fix the power state failure of the BSOD driver

If you get the “Driver Power State Failure” error, don’t worry, because the solution is very simple. There are two possible reasons why this error can appear randomly when using a PC, and luckily there is a solution for both, so we’ll tell you which one.

Causes of Driver Power State Failure Error

By the name of the error, you already have an idea that the problem comes from a driver or a power source, and in both cases you could be right, at least approximately.

Windows throws this error when the system tries to activate a specific device driver and it does not answer … This usually happens when the PC starts up, restarts, or wakes up from hibernation, but it can also happen if the device is in use and the driver suddenly stops responding.

As you can imagine, this is usually driver problem, although it may be due to incompatible hardware, such as trying to put SSD is incompatible with DevSleep for sleep … In any case and whatever the reason, below we will tell you what you need to do to solve it.

Find the culprit for the driver power state failure error

To determine the main reason Driver Power State Failure errors are always recommended to start by unplugging any external hardware, especially USB hard drives. Start your computer and check if the problem persists, because otherwise, the culprit is already quickly found. Plug in external devices one by one to find the culprit, and when you find one, unplug it and restart your computer so that the system can boot normally.

After launch Windows connect the device. Then right-click the Start button and select Device Manager. Find the device responsible for the BSOD, right-click it and select Uninstall.

After that, restart your computer and let Windows automatically reinstall the device. If the error persists, visit the manufacturer’s website to download the latest driver and follow their instructions to install it. If you can’t, go back to Device Manager, right-click the device and, instead of uninstalling it, click Update Driver and follow the steps in the wizard to Windows tried again.

Errors in device manager

If you can start the computer in the usual way (as we explained in the previous point), do so. But it may also be that the malfunction is not in an external device, but in an internal one, or that you cannot find the culprit, so if the computer does not start, you should do it in Safe mode as this avoids the Driver Power State Failure error because the drivers are not loaded.

After that, open Device Manager again and look for those that have a red X or yellow exclamation mark (you need to go through all the categories to do this), as this indicates that there is a problem with them. Right-click the appropriate device and select the option to update drivers. If that doesn’t work, remove the device as we showed you in the previous point.

Then you can either restart your computer or click the button on the panel that says “Check for hardware changes”; in both cases, the system will try to reinstall the driver again.

If you still have the same problem after doing this, search for the appropriate drivers on the affected device manufacturer’s website and install them. If you get this BSOD after installing new hardware on your computer, you might be the culprit.

Adjust your power plan

Especially if you own a laptop, you probably have a tight power plan to optimize battery usage. This is fine in most cases, but in some cases it can cause the BSOD driver power state to fail. Instead of allowing Windows “Wake up” the device properly, if the system turns off the power, it can lead to a fatal error for the driver, causing the aforementioned BSOD.

While tweaking the power plan may cause your laptop to consume more battery (although this is also true for the desktop PC), the best thing you can do to avoid this mistake is to select the default “balanced” plan in Windows… To do this, go to Power Options (click Start and type Change Power Scheme) and then click Restore this plan to defaults.

If you wish, you can also manually edit the power plan (by selecting the “Change advanced power settings” option above) and manually change the behavior of the equipment. We recommend that you select all settings for maximum performance and avoid the suspend or hibernate device options. Pay special attention when manually configuring PCI-Express options as they usually have a lot to do with this BSOD we’re dealing with here.

Restart your computer and see if the problem is resolved. If not, we recommend that you follow the reverse process of what you did in the previous step, that is, if you manually configured the settings, select the default values, and if you chose the default value, change them manually.

In any case, chances are, by applying one or more of these methods that we told you, you can finally get rid of those tiresome blue screens.