In the past two months I've often returned to find that my computer screen says "Waiting to Hibernate". My PC is a Dell from 2002, and it is working fine.
Paul Knutson
Manufacturers have put a lot of effort into making laptops hibernate and wake up reasonably well, but haven't bothered much about desktops, where a daily reboot could be considered therapeutic. Some older PCs don't support hibernation at all, and hibernation can be blocked by various hardware and software components, applications, peripherals, old device drivers, and BIOS settings. Microsoft has a step-by-step guide, How to troubleshoot hibernation and standby issues in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907477), that covers the main approaches.
