I have a fresh install with dual boot Windows and encrypted home directory and I am running into this problem. Anytime I disable the swap file in /etc/fstab my laptop loses the ability to suspend or to wake up from suspend.
It either fails to suspend - restarting instead, or becomes unresponsive after suspending, or the keyboard is not working.
Has anyone had similar problems? Any idea what can be going on?
Not for suspend, but for hibernate Linux uses the swap. You need to have a swap space activated bigger than the actual RAM memory in use.
Suspend keeps the information in memory at the cost of a small part of battery, I've observed 0.5% to 1% of battery per hour suspended. Hibernate swaps the memory to the swap space and completely powers off the computer, so it uses 0% of battery.
I believe your computer is attempting to hibernate instead of suspend, or after a while being suspended (this can be setup) it attempts to hibernate.