Standby Mode in XP

[Dave-H]

Thanks bphlpt for that very detailed analysis!

You (and den) are absolutely right of course.

My system is so complex, and has been through so many changes over the years, that there are a myriad of possible reasons why standby doesn't work in XP.

It didn't even work with my previous motherboard, long before I installed Windows 8.1 and made it triple boot.

It was originally dual Windows 98 and Windows 2000, and there was no standby mode available even then.

Your suggested option, a new clean install, is a very good one and probably the only way of knowing for sure whether the problem is intrinsic or whether it's due to something installed and running on the system.

That would be no small undertaking though, so I don't think I will do it just to perhaps, and it is only perhaps, get back a facility that I've actually lived without for many years anyway!

It was just something that in a bored moment I thought I would investigate, hoping (obviously wrongly) that I would just find some magic registry tweak or something that would bring it to life.

I found a couple of MS knowledge Base references relating to Windows 2000 which said that the standby modes do not work by design with multi-processor systems, or if terminal services are enabled in Windows 2000. That's almost certainly why I didn't have them on Windows 2000, but I assume those limitations didn't carry over to XP.

I will continue investigating!

Cheers, and thanks again, Dave.

[bphlpt]

Sounds like a plan.

The next time you are "in a bored moment", if you have a spare disk drive to use, and it wouldn't need to be a large one at all, it really shouldn't take all that long to pull everything out of your system, put the spare drive in, and do a simple XP install. It then shouldn't take very long to reverse the process and get your system back to the way it is now after the experiment is completed. It would probably take less time in total than your other investigations and experiments. But by all means proceed in the manner that is most comfortable to you. It is your system after all. I do realize that some folks enjoy the "what if" and "I wonder what would happen if" and "I wonder why it does or doesn't" type speculation as an end to itself.

 

Have a great day my friend.

 

Cheers and Regards