Question About Standy By/Hibernate Mode

This may be a dumb question, the cause may be obvious and I'm just overlooking it.
I have both of my desktop PC's set to go to Standby mode after 1 hour, then to Hibernate after 3 hours. Sometimes they do this, sometimes they just stay on. This computer right now refuses to do this, I checked the settings and they are still as I set them. Any answers?

Thanks,

John (The sometimes computer illiterate guy).

Are they HP computers? (I have 2 HP's that have problems going into or staying in those modes)

Change the setting to something else, save the settings, then change them back to what you want and save again. Sometimes this works, don't ask me why, just typical Microsoft sh*t software.

Devil5052 wrote:Are they HP computers? (I have 2 HP's that have problems going into or staying in those modes)

One is a Compac, the other is a Gateway.

rberq wrote:Change the setting to something else, save the settings, then change them back to what you want and save again. Sometimes this works, don't ask me why, just typical Microsoft sh*t software.

I'll try that, both PCs are running Windows XP. Events like this seem to happen from time to time, once my entire "Bookmarks" list in Firefox just disappeared, In the program for my Palm handheld 3 months of my calender entries disappeared. I don't have a lot of faith in Microsoft software anyway.
Thanks.

My daughter has an iBook, it's starting to look better every day. It's a good thing Microsoft doesn't build coal stoves.

In my limited experience with computers and Microsoft Windows the standby and hibernate modes are a joke. I just set my monitor to turn off after a while and let the computer run normally. I do have a Toshiba lap top that hibernates and wakes up out of it without problem but never had a desk top do it properly. Yes Mac is looking pretty good these days, just need more $$$$

These PCs have never worked properly as far as hibernate mode is concerned. It's just a pain to shut down and then restart the next time I want to use the PC, but I don't like them running all day and night sucking up electricity.
The old Gateway I had had a "sleep" button on the keyboard, sometimes I couldn't wake it back up, and would have to reboot.

You really don't want a PC going into standy or hibernate. These modes were designed for laptops to better extend the battery's cycle. Turn power on and of to things like hard drives isn't good for them. A desk top PC should be turned on and left on. Feel free to power down the monitors, but leave everything else up and running. You save tiny amounts of power turning off a HDD.

You probably have something running that won't allow it to power down down, if I'm playing "Rise of nations" and just use alt-tab to minimize it the only thing that will go off is the monitor. Power it up, don't load any applications and see what happens.

I've seen a lot of debate as th to whether its prudent to be powering them on or off, I know in the past disks tended to fail a lot more than they do now so that's probably the reasoning behind it. Anyhow I have mine set to power down the dics after a while, the one disc for example is very rarely used so in that case its certainly adding life to it.

Every hdd has a MTBF (mean time between failure) Some are much better than others. That said, the only drives I've lost in desktops have been in units we powered up and down often. Same thing at work. Hundreds of windows servers there and I can count the number of drives we lost in the last 10 years, IDE, SATA or SCSI on one hand. They never shutdown.

My advice is to buy a UPS and let the machine run 24-7. Advice is typically worth what you pay for it.

Neither PC is going into standby anyway even after resetting the times, so I'll just take av8r's advise and just let them run. I didn't realize that powering up a hard drive several times a day could have an effect on it's lifetime. It may very well be there is an application running somewhere that's contributing to this.
The fans in this Compaq are noisy though, I can tell from outside the room when it's not hibernating. They aren't worn out, just have always been noisy. The Gateway has nice quiet fans, you can barely tell it's powered up.

Wood'nCoal wrote:Neither PC is going into standby anyway even after resetting the times, so I'll just take av8r's advise and just let them run. I didn't realize that powering up a hard drive several times a day could have an effect on it's lifetime. It may very well be there is an application running somewhere that's contributing to this.
The fans in this Compaq are noisy though, I can tell from outside the room when it's not hibernating. They aren't worn out, just have always been noisy. The Gateway has nice quiet fans, you can barely tell it's powered up.

You can buy quieter fans for not much money.

Lot of fan noise comes from the power supply, I installed a new ultra quiet one about 2 years back and that cut the noise in half. It's also "smart" it doesn't ramp unless it has too.

Richard S. wrote:Lot of fan noise comes from the power supply, I installed a new ultra quiet one about 2 years back and that cut the noise in half. It's also "smart" it doesn't ramp unless it has too.

I figured that someone would suggest that.
Some PC's have a second fan for the processor, If memory serves me correctly both of these only have 1.