I hit the Sleep button instead of Shutdown by mistake. How do wake the computer again? I tried moving/clicking the mouse to no avail. I tried Ctrl-Alt-Del, Esc, and all the function keys but nothing happened. The monitor remained in stand-by mode. I finally had to turn of the computer by holding down the power button. On powering it up again it failed to activate the monitor and do the POST routine. I unplugged it from the power socket, left it off for about 1 minute and then managed to restart it. My system is a Dell Inspiron 530 desktop with an Intel Core2 Duo E6750 and Nvidia GeForce 8600GT graphics.

Check your power settings and try turning off advanced settings / sleep / allow hybrid sleep. Also try BIOS Power settings S3 - not S1. Kris

Check your power settings and try turning off advanced settings / sleep / allow hybrid sleep. Also try BIOS Power settings S3 - not S1. Kris Thanks. I guess that I am asking a dumb question here, but how would I normally expect to get a desktop computer to resume operation after going to Sleep? The default power plan settings were Balanced, with Turn Monitor Off - 10 min, and Sleep - 30 min. I've changed this to High Performance with Turn Monitor Off - Never, Sleep - Never. When I initially installed Windows 7 , the default settings (above) turned the monitor off while I was having a coffee. How would I expect to get the monitor to turn on again? I had expected that moving or clicking the mouse would do that , but it didn't. I had to press Ctrl-Alt-Del to get it to come to life again - displaying the shutdown options screen. I checked the BIOS Power settings - it was S3 (STR), whatever that means.

Check your power settings and try turning off advanced settings / sleep / allow hybrid sleep. Also try BIOS Power settings S3 - not S1. Kris Thanks. I guess that I am asking a dumb question here, but how would I normally expect to get a desktop computer to resume operation after going to Sleep? The default power plan settings were Balanced, with Turn Monitor Off - 10 min, and Sleep - 30 min. I've changed this to High Performance with Turn Monitor Off - Never, Sleep - Never. When I initially installed Windows 7 , the default settings (above) turned the monitor off while I was having a coffee. How would I expect to get the monitor to turn on again? I had expected that moving or clicking the mouse would do that , but it didn't. I had to press Ctrl-Alt-Del to get it to come to life again - displaying the shutdown options screen. I checked the BIOS Power settings - it was S3 (STR), whatever that means. S3 in effect means a lighter sleep where it doesn't save the stuff in memory. I have had probs waking correctly from S1. I have not had any integrity probs with Win7 waking from S3. I use monitor off=never, and computer sleep at 20 min. But in either case, wiggling the mouse will bring either just the monitor back, or whole system back, depending on which one went to sleep. HOWEVER: I did have a situation yesterday where wiggling the mouse did NOT wake it up so I pressed computer power on and it went through BIOS post, and then did a "resume windows". I personally feel this is a problem I have with this particular mobo and it's ability to maintain USB consciousness during sleep. It also occasionally looses track of my scanner, or my printer, or my Autumnwave OnAir GT USB HDTV - all of which cases simply need me to unplug and replug the USB connector after the computer has booted to the opsys. "SLEEP" in Vista and Win7 has been such a time saver for me. Kris

Simply moving the mouse should restart your machine from sleep; however, I have found that, sometimes, the mouse (in my case a Laser mouse) isn't always very responsive when attempting to wake the machine from sleep and I do have to move the mouse around the mouse mat a bit to get the machine to start.John Barnett MVP: Windows XP Associate Expert: Windows Desktop Experience: Web: http://www.winuser.co.uk; Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org; Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org;

Hi Kris, Thanks for your comments. Here's an update. After changing my power plan settings to High Performance with Turn Monitor Off - Never, Sleep - Never; I selected Sleep from the Shutdown Menu. The system went to sleep, as it did (by mistake) yesterday, but this time I was able to wake it up simply by hitting the Return key. I then changed the power plan back to Default Settings (Balanced, Monitor off in 10 min and Sleep in 30 min) and again selected Sleep from the Shutdown Menu. This time I had no problems. The system awoke simply by pressing the Return key again. Strange! Someone in a Vista discussion group suggested looking at the Keyboard settings in Control Panel. I looked under Keyboard Properties>Hardware Properties>Change Settings>Power Management. The box marked "Allow this device to wake the computer" was ticked. I suspect that something associated with this could have been the problem, but I haven't specifically changed this setting so it remains a mystery.

I would suggest if it works once, or most of the time, your settings are correct, both in opsys, and in BIOS. However, with power off, but 5V rail maintained, I think there is a lot of variability in how a particular mobo will react when you cause a signal, from kbd, or USB mouse, and whether or not it will actually be seen. It seems to work maybe 95% of the time for me. for the rest, I'll fault the mobo, because of other quirks I've seen. Glad you're up and running!Kris