What's the difference between Standby and Hibernate? Standby, if available, puts your computer into a low-power-consumption mode, but makes it available almost instantly. Standby doesn't save settings or memory, so if the computer loses power during Standby, these are lost. Hibernate, if available, saves all information and shuts down the computer. When the computer comes back on, however, the Desktop is restored to where it was before shutdown. Remember, shutting down using Standby or Hibernate isn't the same as shutting the computer off -- in Standby and Hibernate modes, the computer is still on. Win 9x users should know that the kernel instability in their systems requires a complete shutdown and restart at least once a week, if not more often.

Yeesh, now I find out from Fred Langa that if you use the industry standards for shutdown terminology, there are six states of power modes or "sleep states," from S0 to S5. These are defined in the industry-standard "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface" (ACPI) specification. The ACPI spec is still evolving (it changed as recently as March of this year), and it continues to coexist with an older and far less sophisticated standard called "Advanced Power Management" (APM). As a result, it's not at all uncommon for a given system to have an OS, a system BIOS, and hardware drivers that might be designed either for different power management standards, or different versions of the same standard. Confused? Apparently the industry is, too. These differing standards are often the cause of the irritating "hang at shutdown" problems so often experienced by Windows users. Langa has an article that goes into detail about the whole issue at informationweek.com/story/IWK20020927S0028; definitely worth reading.

You can have your computer shut down in Suspend mode, which lets you fire it back up in less than 30 seconds. When you go through ShutDown, choose the "Stand By" or "Suspend" mode (depending on which version you're running). If it doesn't work immediately, you still have some choices. You may be able to enable the option through your PC's setup utility, or by going through the Power applet in Control Panel. Win 95 users have none of these options.

Not everyone knows that their PC's power switch can be programmed. The front panel power switch on most newer PCs is not precisely the system's on-off switch, but rather is merely a way to access and control the ACPI system. Many new systems have the true on/off switch on the back, mounted on the power supply itself; it's out of the way by design, because the idea is to control the power via the ACPI system and the front panel "soft" switch. You should explore your Power Settings applet in Windows' Control Panel. You may find that you can alter what happens when you hit the power switch -- shut down, suspend, or other options. Depending on your PC vendor and the system BIOS, you may also find that the front-panel power switch performs different actions depending on how you depress it -- a momentary push versus a 4- or 5-second press-and-hold, for example.

Good news for laptop and notebook users: careful use of power management tools and decreasing screen brightness can stretch battery life by 30 to 45 minutes. Open Control Panel and go into Power Options. You'll see several tabs (the layout varies slightly among notebooks). Make sure that your notebook can go into Standby mode (in the Power Schemes tab), meaning that the system stops most activity and uses the battery to refresh system memory. A computer in Standby loses 10 to 15 percent of its charge each day. You should set your system to go into Hibernate mode after Standby, meaning that it writes an image of the memory contents to the hard drive and then shuts down. (Windows 98 doesn't offer Hibernate.) In Hibernate, there's no loss beyond the battery's own gradual discharge.

Well, I found out why Win 98/ME sometimes locks when you try to put it into Suspend mode. You're gonna love this. You get this bug, believe it or not, when a drive letter is lower case in the SYSTEM.INI. You can fix this by doing the following: First, select Start, Run, type MSCONFIG in the Open: box, then press OK. Select the SYSTEM.INI tab. Click the + sign next to the [386Enh] section to expand it. Select the line PAGINGFILE= and click Edit. Change the lowercase drive letter to uppercase, click Apply, then OK, and restart your computer when prompted. That's all there is to it.

Win 98 users sometimes find their machines "hanging" during shutdown. This can be caused by the Fast Shutdown protocol, which sometimes causes applications still running to crash, causing the system to hang instead of shut down properly. The easiest way to handle this is to disable Fast Shutdown by going into Start, Run, and typing MSCONFIG in the box. Press Enter, and press the Advanced button. Check "Disable Fast Shutdown." Win 95, 98SE, and ME users, you won't experience this problem.

Reboot Windows frequently using the "cool-boot" method listed earlier. Always do so after finishing a long session on Windows, after a shorter but complex session (i.e. multitasking), after using a bulky app with large data files, or before logging onto an ISP or onto any network. This allows Windows to approach the new task ahead with refreshed system resources, and not being asked to run a new task from a depleted state.

Another way to easily restart Windows is to create an icon on your desktop that does it for you. Start by opening Notepad and type @EXIT (no punctuation, of course). Save this document under the name RESTART.BAT or whatever name suits you, just don't forget the .BAT extension. Save it in your Windows folder. Close Notepad, open Explorer, shrink Explorer's window to less-than-full size, find Restart in the Windows directory, right-click and drag it to your desktop, and choose Create Shortcut(s) Here from the menu that appears when you release the right mouse button. This puts an MS-DOS icon on your desktop called Shortcut to Restart.bat. Right-click the icon and choose Properties. Click on the Program tab and check the Close on Exit box. Click on the Advanced button; you're presented with two options, "MS-DOS Mode" and "Warn Before Entering MS-DOS Mode." The first option should be selected; the second one should not. Click the OK button twice. From now on, you can restart Windows simply by double-clicking on this icon.

Want to shut down Windows with one click? Create a shortcut to the Shut Down command by following these simple steps. First, click on an empty area of your Desktop and choose "New," then "Shortcut." In the Command Line, enter the following exactly: C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL.EXE USER.EXE,EXITWINDOWS and click the Next button. Give the shortcut a name (mine is ShutDownWin) and click Finish. After a moment, a new icon will appear on the Desktop sporting the Windows logo. Click it to shut down Windows whenever you like.