Standby button not available

Padraig Mor

Hi,

Friend of mine is having a problem with her machine (WinXP Home, standard spec Dell). When she picks the 'shutdown' option from the Start menu, the Standby button is not available. It IS there (along with Shut Down and Cancel) but is 'greyed' out and cannot be pressed! Anyone come across this before?

Khannie

Is it an older machine? Old machines may not be capable of standby mode. Also, I've experienced a bug because my work machine has > 1 gig of ram (there's a patch available for that at the MS site). Also, you'll need to make sure "hibernation" is enabled...start->settings->control panel->power options->hibernate->enable hibernate.

HTH.

Padraig Mor

Khannie wrote:

Is it an older machine? Old machines may not be capable of standby mode. Also, I've experienced a bug because my work machine has > 1 gig of ram (there's a patch available for that at the MS site). Also, you'll need to make sure "hibernation" is enabled...start->settings->control panel->power options->hibernate->enable hibernate.

HTH.

Nope, nearly new. 1 gig RAM. Machine was fine (incl Standby) but went crazy a couple of weeks ago and she had to reformat drive and reinstall Windows; since then no Standby (and no 24hr clock)! That hibernation option sounds like a goer; will check it out.

jonnybadd

Stand by is greyed out when the computer is in safe mode? Any chance that its this?

SickBoy

I think I came across this before. Try holding the shift button then click standby.

rsynnott

The clock thing is just a regional setting.

BobTheBeat

Go to start->control panel->switch to classic view->power options

Hibernate tab is available here, plus other power settings which could affect this

<edit> oops, just saw someone else had the same written! </edit>

jozi

Notice after a clean install of windows its never available.
To get it you go into your screensaver options (i think) and then power and there's a hibernate tab there, prob same as above.
Khannie: whats this bug?

Jozi

Padraig Mor

Can't actually check the computer myslef (it's at her house) but she says there's no Hibernate tab in the Power settings. Will get her to check the Shift trick.

Khannie

jozi wrote:

Khannie: whats this bug?

My work machine has 4gigs of ram. With >1 gig (but maybe not exactly 1 gig) the machine refuses to hibernate. Says it hasn't got enough resources.

Nearly pissed myself laughing when it said that.

Anyway, MS have a patch out for it. Just search their website. Think you need a restart after patching (though it doesn't warn you of this).

SickBoy

I'm not sure if I read the post wrong but I've read it a few times now and I can't see where Padraig Mor asked about hibernate. Standby and hibernate are two seperate things. Standby puts the system into a low power consumption mode where the system can be restored in a matter of seconds. Hibernate on the other hand copys the entire contents of the RAM to the hard disk and then completly shuts down. When power is returned the system returns to the exact state before the hibernate was initiated similar to standby but takes a lot longer, though not as long as a normal startup.

Khannie

Sickboy's totally correct.

I did assume "hibernate" which is totally different to going into low power mode (standby). There's no mention of standby in my power settings in control panel mind you.

I'm remote desktop'ing to my XP machine, so I can't see my "shut down" menu at the moment.

Padraig Mor

Think I've got it sorted - hopefully. Seems to be a problem with virtual memory settings. I'll get her to give it a lash tonight.

stevenmu

Check as well that the motherboards drivers are installed. Windows has good enough ones built in for most motherboards but they won't recognise the low power function (ACPI I think it's callled, you could also check device manager to see if there's an entry in there for it) on all motherboards.

Padraig Mor

Padraig Mor wrote:

Think I've got it sorted - hopefully. Seems to be a problem with virtual memory settings. I'll get her to give it a lash tonight.

Wasn't virtual memory! If it's of any use to anyone, I eventually got it sorted. Turned out to be a generic XP video driver not being able to put Gfx card into standby, preventing the whole machine from standing by. A quick blast of the latest ATI drivers sorted it out nicely!