How do I make my comp completely turn off

[AirForceElite]

hello folks

i used to have a HP laptop which i returned (returned because i didnt really need it) and i remember that there was an option on it where you could completely turn it off by putting it to sleep.

it wasn't a complete shutdown because after you turn it to sleep or hibernate (i dont remember what the exact name was) you just pressed ANY key and it would power up by itself.

so i build a new PC 2 weeks ago, and i would like to learn how to turn it off by not shutting down.

see, sometimes i go away from apartment for 2-3 hours and i would like to stop the computer but not shut it down because i hate to restart every time (sometimes i don't know if i will go out for a long time or no...so i can't shut down everytime i go out because there is a chance i will be back very shortly)


anyways, to sum it up:

how do i make my computer to stop so that it becomes completely silent like my laptop used to do, but without shutting it down?

I tried the Sleep feature, but in the mobo manual, it says that Sleep just puts the PC into very low power consumption mode, it doesnt turn it off which is what i want to do

edit: my OS is WinXP Home (not pirated)

 

[jaqie]

google "enable hibernate support {your os here, such as XP or vista}"

 

[l0cke]

Also if your computer has S3 sleep mode that will do the same thing.

 

[kylef]

It sounds like you want S3 support, not hibernate. It also sounds like you have S1 support enabled today. You can switch from S1 to S3 support in your BIOS configuration utility. Many motherboards still ship with this as the default "sleep" state configured in their BIOS settings, whereas most purchased OEM systems from Dell/Acer/HP as well as laptops all use S3 as the default setting.

In S1 ("Sleep" or "Legacy Sleep"), the peripherals such as hard disks and CPU are put into a low-power state, but the power supply is kept fully active (fans on). Because the power supply remains on, this state is rarely entered on purpose. For some reason, many motherboards continue to ship with this state as the "default" ACPI sleep state, while most users would prefer S3.

In S3 ("suspend to RAM"), your RAM is kept active but the CPU and all peripheral devices, including the power supply and its fans, are de-energized. The computer appears to be "off" but the ACPI power LED flashes on and off. Some systems support keeping the USB, PS2, and/or LAN ports powered while in S3 in order to wake the system by activity on these buses (i.e., by clicking your USB mouse). These port power settings can usually be configured in the system BIOS. Resuming from S3 is very fast; usually on the order of a few seconds.

In S4 ("hibernate"), all contents of RAM are paged out to disk in a hibernate file. The computer is turned off entirely; the ACPI power LED is off. On resume from hibernate, most systems will POST like they are cold booting, but rather than the normal Windows boot screen, a different "Resume from hibernate" splash screen appears, as the system pages in the hibernate file back into RAM. Under ideal circumstances, resume from hibernate is faster than normal boot, plus it maintains a snapshot of your applications at the time the system entered S4. But because hibernate is slow, especially on systems with slow disks and lots of RAM, hibernate is much less popular. Unless you request it specifically, Microsoft only uses Hibernate today as a "backup" state for S3 (see next paragraph).

Vista actually uses a combination of these two states, which Microsoft calls "hybrid sleep", on desktop systems (without backup batteries). When you click on the red "power down" button on the start menu, Vista will quickly write out a hibernate file and then enter S3 (not S4). When resuming from Hybrid Sleep without a power interruption, resume will be identical to that of S3 (a few seconds). But in case power was interrupted while your system was in S3, the contents of RAM will be lost, but the system can still boot from the archived hibernate file on disk, preventing data loss.

 

[JackMDS]

In case of a laptop you should also look at the manual.

Many Vendors load additional Power Managing application at StartuP, and the whole thing is just turns into One Big Chaos.