Hi,

I'm new here but not to computers, having had a love/hate relationship for years. I guess I'm an intermediate user by now but I'm no expert by any means.

I have been having this problem for quite some time now and I would really like to solve it if possible. I was told a while ago that since this is a desktop, I should just shut down instead of using standby since "desktop SYSTEM hardware is really not designed to use Standby like a laptop is. " I don't quite BELIEVE this since I'd used standby with no problems for more than a year. Unfortunately it's been so long that I don't remember if I changed anything to cause this.

What happens is that Standby works normally one time and then when I power up and try to go to standby again, it will go through all the motions, the monitor shuts off but when it beeps, instead of the power supply powering off, it just keeps running and is unresponsive to any key strokes. I have to hold the power button for 4 secs to shut the system down. Then when I power up and start Windows, I can then go to Standby. And the cycle repeats and will happen every other time. When Standby does work and the COMPUTER resumes, I get the message that Windows is shutting down even though it's starting up. Everything else is normal though but then the next time I go to Standby, it will fail again as described.

If I had a wrong setting, why would it only happen every other session and not all the time? And it's very regular. It has alternated like this consistently for several months now. I thought I could live with this and will if I have to but every now and then I take a shot at fixing it. Hopefully SOMEONE here can at least steer me in the right direction. What's making this difficult to search for is the fact that it alternates. I have no idea where to look because of that.

Thanks!Standby, sleep, and whatever, have a history of causing problems here, and there.
I don't use it.As Broni stated this is an ongoing problem with Microsoft. You can go to Microsoft home page and in search type in "Standby Problems" and find a basket full of various problems. I don't use it either, but my wife wants in on her computer. I solved her problem with this: click control panel, click power options, set turn off monitor to 30 minutes, turn off hard disks never, system standby 30 minutes, hibernate never, click OK. So far standby working OK.Wow thanks for the quick replies!

I didn't realize that it was widespread and that many don't use standby. I really like the convenience. The main problem with not using standby is that I'm on and off line most of the time and it's nice to just hit a button and have the system power up without waiting for the startup process to complete several times a day.

My power settings had 5 or 6 hours as the max for everything with hibernate enabled. I changed them to what you suggested and restarted but no difference. I guess the main question I have is why it fails every other time. It's like it's on some odd loop. Quote

the main question I have is why it fails every other time

This is the question, which even Micr$oft is not able to answer.

Standby is a waste of the time it's supposed to save....

the OS has been so "backward compatible" for so long, that they'd be experts on it by now