Dell 1420 sleep

My set up is a Dell 1420 with Vista Premium 32 bit sp1 with the Intel x3100 GPU


1.) What is the diffrence between sleep and hibernate?
2.) Is there a way to close the lid and still be able to listen to music?
3.) When ever I close the lid to enter sleep or hibernate mode it changes the graphics to a lower setting. I there a way to fix this?

 

When your system hibernates, it writes everything sitting in the memory to the harddrive, then basically does everything aside from completely shutting off. Its like a frozen system state . . .draws minimal power. Sleep is similar to that, shutting off many components and what not, but it does not go to the same extreme. Benefit? It wakes up a lot faster. Detriment? Sucks more juice.

Don't know why or what exactly you mean by your computer defaulting to a lower graphics setting when it sleeps. Mine doesn't do that.

If you go into your computer settings and look at your power settings, there should be an option to select what you want the PC to do whenever you close your lid. If you are plugged in, you could choose sleep for example, on battery you could choose hibernate. Or, if you want your media stuff to keep running you could select "do nothing" (when you close the lid).

 

What I mean by lower graphics is that the resolution drops (normally I have 1440x900).

Tried the no action when lid closes and music will still stop.
(I am adjusting the settings for when unpluged (and yes it is unpluged))

 

Hmm. That sort of stumps me then. I feel like the music stopping would be designed that way . . . since the media buttons are available only when the screen is open. Media direct PCs should allow to play when they are closed up.

As for the resolution changing . . . if you are using the upgraded screen then it should want to stay at 1440x900 by default. Check your display settings to make sure that everything looks saved. I would look at the driver utility also and see if there is any settings there that might effect that (I wouldn't know because I use nvidia, not the onboard).

 

Well now I with I spent the extra 100 for the 8400 because I can not find anything wrong it just does not work. So not much I can do now.

 

Do you run more than one monitor? Have you tried to re-create the error with the ac adapter plugged in, or running just off the battery? Somehow it sounds like your PC is losing its monitor settings. I might try re-installing the graphics driver perhaps, or booting into the bios to see what your monitor settings there are. If you *rebooted*,
1. manually changed your settings so that they were wrong (Anything other that what you get automatically when you open the screen back up from sleep, NOT 1440X900)
2. close the screen, let it go into standby, and then open it back up.
3. Are the settings the same, or different? Did it return to the same setting you have gotten all along or something else?

Try that out and tell me what happens

 

I will not be able to do this today but I will try tomarrow morning and then update.

Thankyou for your help.

 

Don't mention it. And if it turns out that your comp is in the fritz, well, I hope you get it fixed for free!

 

Nothing seems to work so i guess I have a dud. The warrenty has run out so Dell wont do much.

 

Hey,
Concerning your qeustion on closing the lid and listening to music, it's simple to do that.
Just go to control panel - power options. On the left column, you should be able to see something like "Choose wat closing the lid does"....you can set it to do nothing.
Hope this helps

 

Drummer,

If you follow what anuclearbomb said then it should work . . . the computer will never be triggered to standby unless you told it to. You would want to set that option for BOTH ac plugged in, and battery also. Maybe if you were a little more specific about what exactly is happening, and what exactly you are doing before it happens, we might be able to figure out whats going on.

 

ok I got it to play music when it is closed.

But I still have the problem of changing resolutions.

Heres the test.

unpluged:
Changed setting for when the lid is closed to go to hibernate.
res 1440x900
When I open the lid it did the normal start up stuff. but the res was dropped to like 1080x600

second test (this is the weird one)
unpluged:
Changed setting for when the lid is closed to go to hibernate.
But I put the res to 1280x768
I closed the lid waited. Opend the lid and it did the normal start up but then it went to 1440x900.
weird

 

Alright half the problem is solved!

As for the other half . . . that is weird. The resolution drops when you have it at default, but it increases when you drop it yourself.

I would still be looking for a culprit somewhere in the monitor settings. Check display properties . . . is it somehow set up for multiple displays? Is there a drop down menu that lists more than one available monitor? Repeat the test with the power cord plugged in. Same exact results?

I would consider wiping out the drivers for both the monitor (plug and play) and graphics and then re-installing.