need help with my laptop

[fakan]

hello guys

I have a little problem. Every time I'm leavin my laptop on (downloading something or just leave it idle), when I come back later on the screen is black and doesnt react when I move with the mouse or press any key on my keyboard.

I set up the lid so it doesnt go to stand-by or anything like that hmmm if I leave it closed for short period of time when I open it up .. comes back no problem but after few hours sometimes 20 minutes .. the screen is black but still the music of the net is playing and everything.

its inspiron 5150 3.06 GHZ P4 512 ram WIN XP PRO + ALL UPDATES

the thing is that it cant go to sleep when I'm downloading 15 files and its playin music at the same time.

Thats why I went to settings and set the option "when I close the lid" - " do nothing"

so it should be running no problem.

when I dont close the lid its ok and never does that but when I close it and come back after some time its playing the music and still downloading the files but the screen is black

any ideas ?

the laptop came with XP home, I formated the hd and installed brand new install of XP PRO hmm I hope thats not the issue cause its running great with out any problems .. except that black screen

I have all windows updates and just updated bios and chipset

yeah all the power saving utilities r in the laptop. There are 2 options of settings
1: if the laptop is pluged in the electrical outlet / the monitor + screen saver n all those settings r set on max

2: if the laptop is on battery power / screen saver + monitor off n sleep mode kicks in sooner.

device manager shows everything installed as well as the dell support website

so the laptop is hooked on electrical outlet and "closed lid" option is set to " do nothing "

it shouldnt even go to sleep I think ...

[Steve R Jones]

I've had the same problem on a Latitude. Ended up just leaving the lid up.

[LeftCoast]

Same prob here on my 5100, so I just leave it up a little.

[fakan]

I'm not sure whats the problem but there has to be something I can do

have u guys tried to contact dell about this problem ?

[excuzzzeme]

Sort of sounds like it is hibernating. Have you disabled Hibernation?

[fakan]

yeah its turned off I never used it hmmm is there anything I can do to check out whats goin on with the lid ?
is there any diagnostic software ?

[mar122999]

I know that whenever you format and re-install an OS without the restore disk, you can miss some necessary drivers that allow certain power management features to work. Did the problem occur whenever you had the XP Home installed?

[fakan]

I havent really used this laptop with old home edition Xp but when I reinstalled the winXp hmm and there would be some drivers missing u should be able to find'em in ur device manager no ?

As I got response from other users its very comon problem with the laptops....

What drivers r you thinkin of ? The power saving utillity is exactly same as win XP home edition uses no ?
(looks the same to me all the options n stuff)

[mar122999]

My toshiba laptop has a utility that over-rides the power management features that Win XP uses. Whenever I formatted the drive and reinstalled Win XP Pro from a CD (not restore disk), I lost those utility apps. Now it acts strange sometimes. Like whenever I close the lid to my laptop, it goes into standby mode and whenever I re-open it, it doesn't want to come on sometimes. But before, my PM worked great. I believe that drivers for laptop's can be very sensitive and specific sometimes. Sometimes it is always best to use the restore disk.

[fakan]

hmm so basicly before u formated the ur hd u never had this problem before ?? hmm what about original cd's that came with the laptop maybe over there r drivers for the power management ?

I found all the drivers on the disk that came with the laptop but I'm not sure if there r drivers for power management. do u know what is it called or it doesnt even has a name ?

I dont like the restore disk cause it overwrites the windows files and thats it .. its not clean install and u never get rid of stuff on ur hd like using fdisk or just clasic format c:

why I formated the hd at the first place was cause all the junk that the laptop came from dell .. just too much useless software

is it possible there r some aplications u can download off the net specialy made for power-management ?