Strange sleep mode issue with Vista

I'm running Vista/64 on a Dell desktop, and from the beginning have been using a castoff HP keyboard that I picked up at a church jumble sale. The HP keyboard has a Fn (function) key, and by pressing that key and F2, I can put the computer to sleep. This has been working just fine for several years now.

But now I've ordered a Microsoft 'curvy' keyboard, and note that it does NOT have a function key. So I tried putting the computer to sleep through the Start menu, but it won't work. I get a System Standby Failed notification, that the WSD (wireless?) Print Device is keeping the system from going to sleep. But this never come up using the old keyboard and its built-in Fn+F2 sleep command.

Evidently the HP keyboard is sending a different command to the system than using 'Sleep under Start.' Is there a way to duplicate this command somehow, or is its derivation hidden in the HP keyboard encoding?



Thanks for any suggestions!

Some possibilities in this tutorial"

How to Create a Sleep Shortcut on the Desktop in Vista

Thanks, Ztrucker; actually, I tried something very similar to that, which also put a shortcut on the Desktop. But the action of that attempt, also mentioned in the one you cited, does the same thing as clicking Sleep under the Start menu, and that just doesn't work. I wish I knew what command the keyboard spit out. I wonder if there's a way to capture that, perhaps with a keylogger program of some sort.

Since you've switched keyboards, it's possible that the old one is still enabled in Device Manager. You might try looking for it there and disabling or deleting it.

Thanks, wither3. I checked, and the only keyboard I have under Device Manager is the standard Windows driver. I think that my old HP keyboard generated a command that 'isn't in the book' as far as the sleep mode goes.

Having said that, I am now, finally(!) able to put the computer to sleep, although I have to go through the Start Menu. No big deal, except that I invariably hit the wrong icon and turn the computer off before I realize what I've done. No big deal, I guess Vista is getting a bit long in the tooth and I'll soon be forced to embrace Win10 or lose all connectivity and computing power. Where is DOS 5.0 when you need it?

I use the Classic start menu so there's no problem with icons (I assume you mean that you hit one of the other two icons next to where you select the shutdown mode if you're not using Classic). Just hit Shutdown and select sleep. If retains that as the default.

In your original post, you said you couldn't put it to sleep using the Start menu. What did you do to change that?

Is a wireless printer shown in the Printer devices?

I think the wireless printer business was why I couldn't enter Sleep through the Start menu. When I tried, the screen went dark, but the hard drive didn't wind down. After a few seconds the monitor would come back to life and up would pop a notice saying that some print device was preventing whatever it was I wanted to do (put it to sleep).

However, with the old HP keyboard, the sleep command built in (Function+F2) would put it to sleep just fine, although I don't think it was true 'hibernate,' because now when I put the computer to sleep it takes a lot longer.

I'm not sure why (or what I did) to prevent the wireless printer from interrupting the cycle, but as I mentioned above, Sleep now is much different from what it was before. It takes longer to get into that mode, and to wake up as well. What's more, now I occasionally lose functions once the computer wakes up. For instance, today everything popped up on the screen and looked good, but later on I realized that I had no sound. And checking Device Manager and even downloading a Microsoft FixIt application was to no avail. I had to restart the computer. The other day it was the keyboard and mouse that were essentially disconnected (had no communication with the computer) when it came awake. I had to force shutdown with the power switch and restart.

I just wish I knew what ASCII string the old HP keyboard was sending to the computer to put it to sleep. Whatever it was, it worked just fine.