Stand By and Hibernate disabled

After reformatting the HD and reinstalling XP, I find that my Inspiron
laptop doesn't have Stand By or Hibernate options. When I close the
lid and re-open it it's nonresponsive on a black screen until I turn
it off with the Power button.

I thought HAL.DLL was missing -- I got that error message once -- but
it's there in SYSTEM32 and the bootlog shows it installed as a driver.
Is there another driver missing? (I can't decipher all those short
file names.) Might it be the wrong HAL, a generic one supplied with
the XP Re-Install CD? How do I find out?

Other idea is that I've deleted the hidden Hibernate partition. It
didn't show up in FDISK or XP Setup; there were two unnamed partitions
(one was CP/M formatted!) but I didn't change them. I've got 8GB left
over, mysteriously enough, so I could set up another partition if I
need one. Would that make it work again?

Did you install everything from Dell that you are supposed to install? There
is an awful lot of software and drivers for their proprietary hardware.

I think so. They sent me, on request, their Drivers CD and I auto-ran
its selection and installation programs. Didn't see anything about
Power Management.

What would the Hibernation partition look like in Disk Management?
Would it be visible there?

When you enable hibernate, the system creates a "file", not a partition,
called hiberfil.sys. It is created in the root of your system drive -
usually C:

Go to device manager. Look under computer for ACPI Uniprocessor PC. Is it
there? What is said about it's condition? Try to update the drivers. What
happens if you do?

I have seen the power management settings for both the mouse and keyboard
prevent a computer from going into standby/hibernate. Make sure the settings
are set to NOT allow these devices to bring the computer out of
standby/hibernate.

Reinstalled the video driver and that brought Stand By back.

Looked up "restore hibernate" in the Knowledge Base and discovered that
some versions of XP don't present the Hibernate button in the Shut Down
box unless you press Shift. I did, Stand By changed to Hibernate, and
the machine hibernates OK.

I do have an excuse for this dumb question, and that is that when the
computer was new out of the box the Shut Down menu included both Stand
By and Hibernate.

My desktop does not go into standby after 20mins even though I have set the
power settings to cause this. I'm told a device might prevent standby mode,
but the options for the mouse and keyboard (for example), 'allow computer to
turn off this device to save power' under their power mangement options are
not available. Is this why it won't go into stanby and if so what can I do
to over-ride this? The 'allow device to bring computer out of standby
option' is available, but is not checked for either device.

[Dumb thumb]

I used to have these options in the logout box, yet after a few automatic updates they have become disabled.

Pover management settings does not give any comfort. And I'm running Samsung Battery Manager 2.0.

Why the heck is it, that the automatic update of your os is changing suitable and selected features this way?

I'm truly thinking of changing into linux or the whole thing into a Mac.

Sometimes installing new MS updates on top of older non MS drivers
will cause problems.

The problem is not with the MS updates, the problem is with your other
drivers that need to also/now be updated to work with the new MS
updates.

This reeks of a video driver problem and you can verify what you have
through Device Manager. Clcick Start, Run and in the box enter:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\devmgmt.msc

Click OK.

Expand Display adapters and find your device, Properties, check the
Driver tab and then check the manufacturers World Wide Web site for an
update and later version.