Power Saving settings not working- windows XP

[Mervyn Thomas]

My power saving settings have stopped working. The control settings appear
to be OK but nothing switches off after the elapsed time and the system
does not hibernate as required. Hibernate still works if I press the
"sleep" button on the keyboard. Any ideas?

 

[SC Tom]

My power saving settings have stopped working. The control settings
appear to be OK but nothing switches off after the elapsed time and the
system does not hibernate as required. Hibernate still works if I press
the "sleep" button on the keyboard. Any ideas?

Something is keeping the system from thinking it's idle. Have you installed
any new software, hardware, patches, updates. etc. right before the problem
started?
What OS, version, and service pack level are you? What type of PC or
notebook is it?

SC Tom

 

[Mervyn Thomas]

Thanks for your reply. Its Windows XP Rev3 and kept up to date on an AMD
Dual Processor Desktop PC. I recently installed an update to Office2007 and
most recently (and probably it's happened since then) I installed
"SpeedUpMyPC" one of those things that is supposed to police the
installation for junk. I am about to see if I can disable it to see if that
makes the difference.
Regards
Mervyn

 

[SC Tom]

SUMP may be the problem if it accesses the HDD in the background. Rather
than disabling it, you may be better off uninstalling it- most of those
types of program aren't worth the disk space they occupy. Of course, that's
just my opinion; others may disagree.

SC Tom

 

[Mervyn Thomas]

Tom - disabling that program has cleared the problem! Thanks for giving me
direction.
So what routine to clean up,the system, stop the PC going slow etc would you
recommend instead of using this type of program? I agree I don't like the
way they take over the show!
Rgds
Mervyn

 

[Bob Willard]

Tom - disabling that program has cleared the problem! Thanks for giving me
direction.
So what routine to clean up,the system, stop the PC going slow etc would you
recommend instead of using this type of program? I agree I don't like the
way they take over the show!
Rgds
Mervyn

You should regularly update and run malware detectors; I use AVG,
SpyBot, and AdAware. And, more importantly, you should "hide" all of
your PCs behind a firewall; I use a Linksys router with a built-in firewall.

 

[SC Tom]

Good! Glad that worked for you.
A regular scan with antivirus/antimalware programs is recommended. If you
see a slow-down, that may be the cause. Running disk clean-up will take care
of all those temp files that build up.
I really don't do much on my Win7 or XP machines other than regular scanning
and I see no day-to-day changes. I watch where I surf, and make sure my
firewall and AV/AM programs are up to date.

SC Tom