Sleepy laptop

[cofco]

I have a Sony Vaio PCG-F160, PII laptop. Running W98SE. Recently it has begun falling asleep. When this happens, the green power light remains on, but the unit will not "wake up" by moving the mouse or touchpad, or any of the keys. The only way to get it back into operation is to hold the power button down until the power light goes off, then reboot.

At first I suspected the battery, but I determined that it would do the same thing on AC power.

I have fiddled with the power management settings, trying different combinations, even "never shut down" and that does not solve the problem.

Then I discovered something interesting. When the boot up process reaches the network password screen (I have a small home network), I do not press enter, the unit will continue to run indefinitely. At this point 48 Hrs. Of course, being stuck at the password screen presents it own set of problems in terms of utility.

The fact that the machine stays on up to the password screen would seem to indicate that the problem is in something that is loaded AFTER the password screen. But What???

Can anyone help?

Thanks

curious have you looked around in the options in the bios for power management or just in windows?