Dear Tech-In-Law,
My laptop computer (PC) is shutting down too soon I want to have it shut down when I say so. I've noticed when I am not active for awhile the screen goes black and I have to re-boot the computer. Can you help?
James


Dear James,
This could be a myriad of issues, but let's start with something simple and just see if it might correct the issue. In Windows, there is a setting called "Power Options" that allows you determine how quickly you would can choose a pre-set option such as "Laptop" that will conserve your battery by shutting down the screens, starting the screensaver, as well as having the system "hibernate" or "sleep" in a low power mode. Your settings could have been altered where the system is set to hibernate quicker than it should.

In Windows XP, you can access this panel by choosing "Start", "Control Panel", then "Performance and Maintenance" and then selecting "Power Options." You might also be able to access this panel quickly by right-clicking on your battery level indicator in your icon bar.

If you happen to have a system tool like Norton installed, it might be a good idea to scan your system and make sure everything else is running as it should. Hope this helps!

Response from James: Thank you - this worked! I went to power options per your instruction and the hibernation was set to only 15 minutes! I changed this to 6 hours and it seems to be fine now.