Hi again ... sorry for my delay (we have out-of-town visitors this week) ...
I'll paste in here a procedure for going back to a version 10 or 9 driver for the Intel MEI... A smart grad student named Dan G. figured it all out & was nice enough to post it for the rest of us. It is basically leaving your current driver installed, then changing a setting so that your Intel MEI drivers won't get automatically updated by Windows 10 (you have to download a Microsoft tool for that), then "downgrading" to the version 10 or 9 driver. Mr. Dan was nice enough to include links to the Microsoft tool, and to the Intel drivers also ...
Here it is:
- Download version 9 or 10 of the Intel Management Engine Interface (MEI) Driver.
- Download the Windows 10 "Show or Hide Updates" Troubleshooter Package (http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/2/2/F22D5FDB-59CD-4275-8C95-1BE17BF70B21/wushowhide.diagcab).
- Change the Windows Update Services setting from Automatic (Delayed Start) to Manual.
- In the Control Panel, select Administrative Tools and open Services.
- Scroll down to Windows Update and double-click it to bring up its properties.
- Click Stop to stop the service from running.
- Change the Startup Type to Manual and click OK.
- Install version 9 or 10 of the Intel Management Engine Interface (MEI) Driver. If you receive a dialog warning about replacing a newer version of the software, accept it.
- NOTE: You do NOT need to uninstall version 11 before installing version 9 or 10. The presence of some version of the driver is required in order to "upgrade" (or in this case downgrade) it.
- Run the Windows 10 "Show or Hide Updates" Troubleshooter Package and hide updates to the Intel Management Engine Interface (MEI) Driver. (Doing so will block your system from automatically reinstalling or showing updates for version 11 of the driver.)
- Change the Windows Update Services setting from Manual back to Automatic (Delayed Start).
- Restart your computer.
- Rejoice! You can finally sleep and shut down again.
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If the Intel driver change, and the Bios update, don't provide any relief for the hibernation/sleep issues, some users have luck by turning off the Fast Startup component in Windows 10 (the default behavior of Windows 10 is a sort of hybrid hibernation at system shutdown, rather than a full old-fashioned shutdown). If you want to try that angle as well, here are the steps for that:
1) Go to the
Control Panel
2) Go to
Power Options
3) In Power options, on the left hand side, select
Choose what the power buttons do
4) Select
Change settings that are currently unavailable
5) Scroll down to the
Shutdown Settings section
6)
Remove the
checkmark from the
Turn on Fast Startup option button
7) Select
Save changes
8)
Shutdown the computer.
9) Wait a minute or so, and
power on again.
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Start Menu issues -- sorry to hear that you are having more issues than just the hibernation trouble. During beta testing there were a few builds of Windows 10 that had Start Menu issues. Most of them were fixed, so I'll look to see if there are any magic spells to restore the Start Menu to health. I'll post what I find here a bit later on.
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"Reinstalling" while saving files ... in Windows 10
You mentioned not having an option to save your personal data while reinstalling Windows 10. Where you using the Reset options in Settings---Update & Security---Recovery---Reset My PC? At that point, you should have seen a screen saying "Choose an option" ... with two options: 1) Keep my files ... and 2) Remove everything. Did you get to that last step and not have the option to "Keep my files"? ... let me know if so.
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.... Time for more coffee & conversation, but I'll check back later on ....