Hibernate on XP/sp3 driving me crazy

[traycerb]

Running xp/sp3 w/ 4gb ram I can't get Hibernate (and sometimes Standby) to trigger automatically (i.e. through Control Panel -> Power Options). There's no error message (e.g no "Inusfficient Resources); the trigger time just passes without any occurrence.

Sleeper.exe has no problems both sending my computer into and recovering from S1 (standby) and S4 (hibernate), and sleeper's log is clean, so it's not a BIOS/Hardware issue, and besides, it hibernates fine if done manually via Start -> "Turn off..." -> (shift) Hibernate.

I've tried shutting down all non-essential processes and services (via task manager) to diagnose it, but still no luck. Often even the monitor blanking fails.

I haven't tried unplugging all my USB devices or unplugging my Ethernet connection for 2 reasons: 1) if Sleeper can initiate the Standby/Hibernate, they shouldn't be holding up the process 2) That's not a viable solution anyway as I'm not going to unplug these devices everytime I want the cpu to sleep.

I've tried most of the solutions here: http://fivepercent.us/2008/06/06/windows-xp-standby-and-hibernate-problems-solved-finally-i-hope/ without any luck, and it's making me crazy.

Any ideas? Not sure where else to go or what else to even try...

[David (PassMark)]

In our experience sleep and hibernate rarely work correctly. For it to work all the device drivers (and hardware) on your system need to be correctly coded to handle sleep and hibernate. But this is a very technical, poorly documented and complex task. So many hardware manufacturers don't bother getting it too work reliably. Various software that you might have running can also prevent sleep occuring.

Note that Vista is slightly better than XP. But still has problems.

[traycerb]

If only Sleeper could replace the XP "Power Schemes" it would solve my problems.

Is there any alternative like that out there? My hibernate and standby work fine, it's just that XP never triggers them.

EDIT: Answering my own question, I tried the freeware version of the program ShutDown1Home and it has an idle timer that can trigger any supported shut-down state. I tried it with hibernate and it worked fine. It doesn't give as fine-grained control as the XP Power Schemes (it only lets you choose one idle time and one shutdown state when the idle time is reached), but it works which is a mighty improvement.

EDIT2: Added another freeware program Slawdog Smart Shutdown to handle standby. Now I have 2 separate programs to handle sleep + hibernate, a kludgy approximation of XP Power Management, but it works.