Dear Computer Lady,
First I would like to thank you so much for your expertise. I have been getting your newletters for years.
I just bought a Dell Inspiron 15 5000 Series Laptop computer.
There appears to be no sleep option for the computer, just hibernate, shutdown and restart. Do you know why this might be and is there a work around to make it just go to sleep.
Thank you, Jan
Dear Jan,
Thank you for your question.
Let’s start with the difference between sleep and hibernate.
Sleep puts your work and settings in memory and uses a small amount of power to hold them there.
Hibernation puts your work and settings on your hard drive and then turns your computer all the way off. There is no power being used in hibernation mode.
Other than that, there is no difference between the two.
If you want to use the sleep feature, you should be able to find it in the power settings in the Control Panel. Just click on the start menu icon and search for “Power Settings”.
You can program the power button and/or lid of your computer to trigger shutting down, sleep or hibernation.
a. Tap the windows logo key on your keyboard and type, “Control Panel”
b. Click on “Control Panel” in the search results to open it
c. In the Control Panel, click on “Hardware and Sound”.
d. Click on “Power Options”.
e. In the left column, click “Choose what the power buttons do”
f. Click the drop down list to select desired setting
g. Click the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the window
h. If you are using a laptop, you will also have a link for closing the lid.
Elizabeth
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Elizabeth Boston is a Web designer, Social Media Consultant and managing editor of, “Ask The Computer Lady”.
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