Hi. I've been trying to diagnose a small but annoying problem on my Dell
notebook. As long as I've had it (3+ months), the power management worked
flawlessly. I have a "system password" set in the BIOS, which is required
when I boot up or manually (i.e., opening the lid or hitting the power
button) bring it out of standby/hibernate. In Windows I have it set to go
into Standby for a couple of hours, then automatically go into Hibernate.
Again, if I leave the computer unattended, it's always resumed right on time
out of standby, and gone directly into Hibernate. Great.

A few days ago I noticed the computer did not go into Hibernate on its own;
it remained in Standby basically indefinitely. I finally noticed the system
was resuming from Standby...then displaying the standard user prompt to
enter the BIOS-set password to "access the data" on the computer. If I'm
there (unlikely), I can enter the password and it dutifully goes into
Hibernate. But if I don't enter the password, the prompt times out and it
drops back into Standby....indefinitely.

There is no setting in this BIOS for Hibernation, so it seems to me it's
controlled completely by Windows. Does anyone know what system calls Windows
makes when resuming from Standby and/or entering Hibernation?

I've been round and round with Dell's tech support over this. Some of the
techs say this behavior is "the way it's supposed to work" (that's funny: I
told them: "so it was broken until now and it fixed itself??), others say
it's Windows's fault, others say it's the BIOS. All hardware diagnostics
check out fine. And again, IT USED TO WORK PROPERLY, so I know the system is
capable of going directly from Standby to Hibernate without the OS doing
something that forces the BIOS password prompt. Any help is appreciated;
thanks.


Fr@nk