Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Putting Vista in the sleeper hold.
| I had my old XP computer set up just right. If I stopped using it or walked away the screen saver would kick in after about 5 minutes. After about 15 minutes it would go to sleep. Yup, your computer will sleep. It's not really a new idea. Laptops were on of the first to use the idea to save their battery power. When you weren't using it or closed the lid it would go to sleep, and shut off power to all but the essential parts. Well over the years all sorts of variations of the sleep concept have come up. Now there's hibernate, sleep, standby, and I am sure there's a few other. I even read that there's actually like 4 or 5 different kinds of "sleep" for computers, though most only support one or two. The problem is, my new Vista computer didn't seem to support any. For the first couple of days, I had it set up on the dining table as I slowly moved my files and settings over. At the end of the day I would just power it down. It was then that I discovered Vista was going to be a challenge. On an XP machine, shutting down was very easy. you tap the "Windows" key. It's NOT the "Start" key, people it does WAY more than bring up the start menu, and you don't even need to use it to bring up the start menu. Hold down Control and Tap the Escape key. Tada! Now back off. So you'd tap the Windows key, then the letter U for "Shut Down" and you'd get the cute window asking if that is REALLY what you wanted to do, or would you rather choose from 3-5 other options. Most of the time it already had "Shut Down" selected so you hit enter. In short, to shut down your computer was the following sequence: Window, U, Enter. Done Not in Vista. No way.  The problem is (as far as I can determine) you HAVE to click on things to get this. Vista now has a "Smart" start menu. You tap the start key and any letters you type it now tries to find a file or program to run for you. Tapping Start and then the letter U shows me a lot of files and programs with the letter U in their names. If I keep typing it narrows the list. Thanks Microsoft for once again screwing those of us who have learn to work smarter by using the keyboard instead of the mouse. I have found hitting Start and then the left and right arrows keys can "walk" you over to the menu without using the mouse but that's just stupid. But back to my original problem. My new computer might go to sleep. On those rare occasions when it did, it might not stay asleep. In addition to the on screen stuff, and the button on the top of my computer, I have a "Sleep" key on my keyboard, too. All of these options and none of them worked. What's worse is there seemed to be no consistency. One day I hit the sleep button on the keyboard and the computer went to sleep. As I stepped out the door it woke back up. So apparently my computer only needed a 4 second nap. One night I woke up to what I thought was an alien invasion. you see I now have a huge 22" flat panel monitor, and my current desktop has a rather greenish tint to it. So when the computer "woke up" in the middle of the night there was this bright eary green glow that flooded out into the hall. And it didn't go away. Until the next morning when I finally pushed the sleep button. I'd finally had enough. I started to search for ways to get it to automatically go to sleep, log me out, and stay that way. I found myself searching the internet because the Vista Help files were not at all helpful. (How ironic!) While I was finding very few solutions, I was finding thousands (millions?) of people with the same problem. As I began to stumble on possible solutions, Id try one. Then I had to wait 10 minutes to see if it worked. Some of the "solutions" required me to reboot my computer. Some of the solutions wanted me to boot my computer with my foot. At one point I found a "solution" that said that a USB mouse and/or keyboard could be causing the computer to wake up. Apparently the computer will occasionally check in with some USB devices to see how they're doing, and a mouse or keyboard could respond in a way that would wake up the computer. The suggested solution: go to device manager and disable the ability for the mouse and keyboard to wake up the computer. I had disabled the mouse from waking up the computer and was on my way to disabling the keyboard when it dawned on me. If neither the mouse or keyboard will wake the computer up, how, exactly do you wake up your computer then? I wonder how many people fell for that trick? I left my keyboard along so it would wake up the computer. I honestly didn't think that was the problem since I don't even have a USB mouse or keyboard. Eventually, solution number 8 worked. I read that the network connection could be keeping the computer from staying asleep. I found the option to have the network connection shut off when sleep sets in and my computer's been fine ever since. The down side is I can't remember all the other options I changed along the way so that I can go set them back. I am afraid I may have turned an insomniac computer into a narcoleptic computer. Who knew Vista caused sleep disorders?  |
