my HP desktop gives me the "blue screen of death" when I have the power management functions set to anything other than "always on." How efficient!

Four words: Blue Screen of Death.

No sleep or hibernate mode for me. I use a screensaver, and I'll turn off my monitor for long periods of inactivity. But my Windows XP machine can't handle sleep, so I keep it awake.

We do it the old-fashioned way -- Turn the machine off when we're not using it! We turn power off at the surge suppressor strip, so computer, monitor, modem, printer are all off when not in use. Takes maybe 20 sec more each session than leaving it on, but saves energy, ensures that machine is not left on through a thunderstorm if we're not there, and reduces opportunities for virus, spyware, etc attacks.

I have both HP and Dell desktop computers with factory installed XP and MS Office. Neither will stay in sleep mode (hibernate or standby). Both wake up on their own and stay on or cycle on and off. I've spent hours trying things from the MS Knowledge base - no luck!

Another person (Suevee) already said exactly what I was going to write.

But in addition to powering off my computer(s) and turning off the surge protector, I also unplug my phone line going into my protector so there is no chance of lightening sending a surge through the phone line and into my machines. About two years ago that happened. The computers were FINE, but my surge protector was ruined. That's its job and I was grateful it had worked, but it cost to replace it. So now I take no chances with anything. I also unplug the entire surge suppressor so that nothing can invade anything. Better safe than sorry!

Tried sleep mode with my Vista/SP1 machine. Went to sleep fine, but I couldn't wake it after multiple tries -- space bar, enter key, mouse click and move, etc. Finally had to shut down. The "Help and Support" link provided neither; and I couldn't find any advice googling. Back to screensaver and powering down the display after 20 minutes.

My XP desktop is really bad about waking up. About 25% of the time it won't wake up and I have to hold the power button down to turn it off, then back on. I have the monitor set to turn off after 20 minutes but I either leave the cpu running or turn it off completely.

I never had trouble with the sleep/wake up on my vista laptop until I installed SP1. Now, if it's been sleeping for more than an hour and I open the lid, I have to hit the power button and watch a screen that says "resuming windows" for 20+ seconds. I used to be able to just type in my password and get back to work. Went from taking 3 seconds to get going again to 30 seconds.

Norman -

To wake up a PC from sleep mode, you need to press the power button for a second or two. Using the keyboard or mouse won't do it - they have no power going to them so they don't function.

I never had any problems with XP with either sleep or hibernate mode with my laptop or either of my desktops, but with Vista some USB devices wouldn't "wake up." Almost always a trip to device manager and disabling and then re-enabling the device would fix it. That seems to have been cured with SP1 for Vista; both sleep and hibernate work great now.

Home users who are having trouble with Windows not staying in sleep mode might want to check their "Wake on Lan" settings and disable them. Check both in Windows (properties of the network connection, usually under power management) and possibly in your BIOS settings also (sorry I can't be more specific here--but look for power settings). It's possible that network line noise may be waking your computer up.

For those on a LAN at work, leave those settings to your IT people.

Some Microsoft Knowledge Base articles that are helpful with sleep problems: KB810719, KB927821, KB944529 and I'm sure there are more.

Ugh,
Your Vista laptop is transitioning from Sleep to Hibernate (after a set period of time - in your case, 60 minutes). The feature is called "Hybrid sleep". You can disable it, or change the time period, by looking for Sleep in the the Advanced Power options (available for each power mode, i.e. High Performance, Balanced, Power Saver,...)

My old E-Machines PC running XP had no problem hibernating, but if I told it to sleep it would show the Preparing to Stand By screen for ever. The only way to stop it was to pull the plug and restart the computer

When I have mine set to go to sleep, it never comes out of sleep mode when I need it to, I pretty much have to reset the computer to go through a system restart

its a dell and running vista...

Helpful,
You were right, most of my power settings stayed the way I had configured them pre SP1 except for the hibernate setting.
Thanks.

Our IBM laptop with XP has troubles going to sleep. If Windows Media Player is open, and sometimes if a Firefox window is open, it will stay active, even when you close the lid. It's frustrating.

Our Dell XP desktop cannot hibernate-- it comes back on fully, with the note "Insufficient resources to execute the API" or something like that. Been like that since the day we bought it,regardless of what's running. We do have it sleep automatically, but I know that's a lot less energy efficient. Grr.

My macbook goes to sleep whenever i close the screen and if I unplug it then it can last a few days on the battery alone before going into hibernation mode from lack of power. I probably should do better about unplugging the AC adapter too.

The Climate Savers group should be working getting their products that business customers to implement power saving settings. Most big businesses leave their PC's on overnight for backup and maintenance which makes them much bigger users of electricity for powering their computers than consumers. This doesn't include the power hungry servers and network gear that are also huge users of electricity, even during off hours when very little usage is seen.

For consumers, increased usage of laptops and LCD screens instead of desktop PC's and CRT monitors are big savers of electricity than the use of power settings as almost all people I know turn off their PC's when they are not home or going to sleep.

It is obvious from all of the comments that I'm not the only one with serious issues with sleep mode.

My machine faile to come out of hibernate mode this morning! It is just such a pain to shut down all the time, but it is better than losing data.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one with this problem. My Dell Vista machine has the same problem as someone else here -- if I have it set for the screensaver to turn on after 10 minutes and then set to sleep after 15, it'll just go to screensaver and never go to sleep. Also, I noticed that my Vostro's Power button (on screen and the hardware one) were both default set to "Sleep"! I had to go in to change the settings so "Power" meant on/off.

I never understood the logic between having so many energy settings -- what, to the user, is the difference between Hibernate and Sleep? I can never tell. Often times, when trying to wake up the computer, I'll hold down the power button a nanosecond too long and it'll just shut down. Frustrating!

I'm with the old-fashined person...just shut it down!

I see the Windows users don't enjoy what we Mac users do: computers that work.

My Powerbook goes to sleep when I close the lid, waking promptly again when the lid opens. Reboots occur when new applications are installed or updates installed.

My PowerMac sleeps nicely on it's own, wakes nicely from its nap, and in my Energy Saver preferences, I have the machine shut down every night and restart every morning.

Of course, a quality battery back-up system safeguards the system and peripherals , complete with phone line and cable connections.

This is one arena where there is no contest between Macs and Windows PCs - Macs win this one hands down. I use both, and I won't use sleep mode on my Windows machines because of all the problems cited above on wakeup. My Mac (an old Power PC model running OS X Tiger) goes to sleep in seconds and wakes the same way - it takes about 2 seconds for the clock to update, and it's ready to go with everything functional. To quote Apple - it just works.

DiamaondJim, Frank S., Helpful: Thanks for being... helpful.

Neighbor: I'm pretty sure I covered your exact problem in a Help File item two weekends ago--try the hotfix remedy described in that piece.

cbr: Standby--in Vista, Sleep--is what you should use most of the time. The computer shuts down everything but keeps a trickle of power going to its memory, allowing a quick awakening... assuming you don't run into the problems people are talking about here. In hibernate mode, the computer writes the contents of memory to a file on the hard drive and then completely shuts down, ensuring that you won't lose any data in the event of a power outage but also extending the time needed for the machine to wake up. (See Microsoft's explanation for more detail.) You don't need to bother with that unless you won't be using the computer for days at a stretch.

- RP

I'm a student always moving around campus, so I'm constantly using the "lid shut puts computer into sleep after x minutes" on my Vista Business HP. Out of what must be approaching 1000 cycles I have had very limited

Hibernate works great on my Dell Latitude D410 running Windows XP Pro. I'm pretty good about hibernating when not using it. How about the power adapter? Does it use power when plugged in but with computer off or in hibernate mode? It must use some. Also I have a docking station with a power adapter that is always plugged in. In general we could all save a lot of money on electricity if we unplugged our stereos, TVs, VCRs, DVD players, radios, etc. that have remote controls. They all basically stay on and consume power so that the remote control circuitry is powered up. I think there's an opportunity here...

I have no trouble with my Windows XP waking up after I put it in sleep since I installed my wireless keyboard. I use the "sleep" command on the keyboard, and the computer doesn't awaken until I gently push the power button.

Rock on Robert! I don't own a MAC myself
:( but whenever I use one, even the older models, it just works. All the settings stay the same, and I've never had one crash, freeze briefly yes, but never crash.
Also the newer Macs that run OSX Lepoard are just as cool and stylish as Vista but use like 1/4 less system reasources.

There are definitely a lot of problems with Windows implementation of the sleep & hibernate features. I help out a lot at a motherboard manufacturer's forums and these questions get asked a lot. Sometimes it ends up being that the easiest thing is to shut it down.

I think computing efficiency itself would be a better thing to work on. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people participating in distributed computing projects worldwide. The CPU runs at 100% load 24/7/365. I have two systems running Folding@Home software all the time. I won't go into it; if curious you can check it out at http://folding.stanford.edu

Regardless, increasing efficiency while the PCs are running seems to be a good idea rather than just telling people to shut down or put it to sleep. The more systems there are running that software, the more good it can hopefully do. All the better if they can do it more efficiently.

Wouldn't you save even more energy by simply turning off or unplugging your computer?
What makes you, your thoughts, or the few seconds you save by having your computer in "sleep" mode so very very important?

Un plug it and save ALL that electricity!

My Dell, about 5 months old, goes to sleep and wakes up with no problems. My problem is that it has this super bright blue LED that flashes and lights up the whole room at night when it is asleep. Keeping everything else awake. I turn it off at night.

Like many folks above, I find that the whole standby/hibernate thing on Windows XP is an unreliable mess. You can tell it in Control Panel > Performance > Power Options > Power Schemes what you want it to do after so many minutes, but you can't count on it doing it. If you really want it to hibernate, do so manually. And when it is time to wake up, there is often a surprise about what state it is in, especially in the laptop. From what I have heard, Vista fails to improve on this.

Power management does not work at all on my Dell Dimension E510 running Windows XP Pro.I checked the system with the sfc /scannow - it did not help.

Hi Rob,
I just got a new Cox cable modem that does not have an on-off switch. So now I am a bit nervous about having a constant connection to the internet when my laptop is on. Cox, and the modem mfr, acknowledge this higher risk of computer attacks, and just says "Make sure your virus and other malware protection is up to date". My question is: Am I prone to attacks if I keep my laptop (w/Windows XP) in "STANDBY" mode (as opposed to "OFF" or "HIBERNATE" which I know are safe)? Since "STANDBY" vs "SLEEP" mode terminology seem to get confusing, let me try to keep our definitions straight. For my Gateway, STANDBY powers off my screen and powers down the computer (fan off, etc). Getting out of STANDBY requires me to quickly hit my loptop power on button. "SLEEP" mode just powers down my computer some (fan still runs), and getting out of it only requires moving the mouse or hitting any key. Thanks for your help.

I have a Dell PC with Vista. Had MAJOR problems getting it to sleep automatically (would do so manually, but sometimes would wake back up). Frank S had some very useful suggestions--Disable "Wake on Lan" as well as settings that allow certain devices to wake up the computer. Service Pack One helped, but it seems the ultimate "cure" was disabling a Logitech setpoint program (for mouse and keyboard) from automatically starting up. Since doing that, sleep mode has worked perfectly.

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