It may be even worse. In my case Windows 8.1 was crashing during the sleep process or in the wakeup procedure. Never really pinned that down. For me, and I have found out with others, it is a case of NetGear Genie. This is a small App that is suppose to let you monitor and administer your NetGear router. For me it did not get a lot of use. I used it mainly to monitor my internet connection. I have a metered connection and extra bandwidth is expensive. In the end with it disabled Windows 8.1 goes to sleep and wakes as advertised.
Are you having the same issue, and don’t have NetGear Genie installed? Well it could be other software installed. The easiest way to track it down is a modified clean boot of Windows. Right click on your taskbar and select task manager. Now go to the startup tab. Go thru each entry and select it and then click the disable button. When you have all of the entries disabled (look under the the status column) reboot your computer. Now let it go to sleep and then shutdown all the way. If you don’t want to wait that long change the settings in your power options.
Once it is totally asleep and shutdown, wake it. Does it wake up? If it does then you need to do the same thing again, but this time turn on half of the startup procedures. Keep going by half of the rest of the disabled entries each time. Once it crashes, you will have narrowed the process down to the process’s that you reenabled the last time. By the way this works better if you write them all down and keep track which ones worked. When it fails, disable the last group you enabled and then Reenable all the rest of them. If it sleeps and wakes as advertised you know where the problem is. Keep chipping down the list. Or you can do it one by one.
If the computer still crashed with all the startup process’s disabled, then the problem is with the services. Hold the windows key and the R key down. In the run box type in msconfig and hit the enter button. Now go to the services tab and check the box marked “Hide all Microsoft services”. Now click the disable all. Then click apply then OK and reboot (if it does not). Test your computer again. If it crashes again the problem is either drivers or hardware. If it doesn’t crash then you need to go thru the services as I explained on how to do the startup process’s. Go by halves or one at a time.
Hopefully by the time you get this far, you will have figured out the problem. Either leave it disabled or uninstall the problem child. One other thing you may want to look at is updates to your drivers and software. If you have updates outstanding, that might be the issue. This includes the BIOS or UEFI update.