Apologies - hopefully I have the right forum with which to post this question. If not, feel free to boo-hiss me at your leisure.

I'm fairly familiar with Windows but I have a problem here that I don't understand and can find no solution for, for my father's Windows ME computer.

The sleep/hibernate button does not work (the moon-marked button on the right-hand side of the computer.) Pushing it does nothing. That's a fairly recent development when I tried a potential fix from the Microsoft troubleshooting site. We can live with it being dead. The problem is getting the computer out of hibernation mode.

When the computer does goes into hibernation (due to Power Settings - currently set for 10 minutes of non-usage), everything goes "dead." When it went into hibernation mode until a month or so ago on this computer (and in general on home computers such as my own), the Moon-marked light above the Num Key pad goes on. Now it does not. The power light on the hard drive itself goes dead. _Everything_ goes dead. Moving the mouse or hitting keys on the keyboard does not bring it out of this "hibernation" mode.

If you hit the power switch on the computer, _then_ the computer comes back up, saying "Restarting Windows" and the screen goes back to where you were. It does not restart/reboot - it comes on just as if it were coming out of hibernation mode.

I've looked everywhere I know of and haven't found anything referring to any such problems. If anyone has any thoughts/suggestions, they would be greatly appreciated - thanks!

Thats quite normal.
Hibernation by definition saves the contents of your ram to hard disk and powers off the PC. When you turn the computer back on, it reads the contents from disk, loads it back into ram, and thus is as you never powered off.
As far as the hibernation button... am I to understand it is on the keyboard or the computer? Either way, as it's not a standard feature, you need a driver/software program for it to work.(either download it off the web or see if it came on your install cd).
If you're looking for a method where the computer is still on, but just in low-power mode, then you're looking for Stand-by. That will not power off the computer completely.

Hmmm. I'm referring to the "Sleep" button that you find in the upper right corner of your keyboard on Compaq-model computers. When you push the button, it goes into sleep/hibernation mode (as far as I can tell, the two terms are synonymous).

Now, according to the Compaq - Presario, getting started book, "You can wake your computer by moving the mouse, by clicking a mouse button, or by pressing any of the keyboard buttons." Presumably this brings it out of sleep and/or hibernation mode. (Again, this is a Compaq computer running Windows ME). Or maybe Sleep mode on the computer was Standby mode (see below).

It no longer does this. As far as I know of, we've changed nothing on the computer (and my father doesn't know enough about computers to get to a point where he could inadvertently change it ). Now if you hit the sleep button, nothing happens. But when you send it into sleep/hibernation mode from Power Settings (under Control Panel), then moving the mouse, hitting a key, etc, doesn't it bring it out of sleep/hibernation mode either. It only comes out of it when you hit the power button on the tower itself.

Now, I'm vaguely familiar with Standby mode, but there's no reference to it in the Presario book or the help program that comes with Control Panel. This _might_ be what the sleep button was doing, rather then "hibernating" it, but in that case I guess the question is - with a Presario/Compaq computer, how do you change the Standby settings that you get to from the Sleep button on the keyboard.

Hope that all makes sense. Like I said, it's a rather puzzling thing, but the sleep button is definitely Compaq-related. It's one of the "instant" type keys along the top of the Compaq keyboard, on the very far right. Also as previously noted, there is a series of lights above the num pad, and one of them is the Moon/sleep light. Before, when you hit the Sleep button, this light would go red.

If you go to Control Panel > Power Options > Advanced, you can assign the Sleep button to do something else. Hope it helps.

Well, the problem is...you can't. That's what's weird. Or rather, you can assign it to Power Off, or Hibernate. But there is never any option to assign the Sleep button (or the Power button on the tower) to Standby. Which is kinda weird, because that's what it's been assigned to for 2+ years. Thus my confusion...