I recently bought a UPS (APC ES700) and have been trying to set up its
accompanying software, PowerChute Personal Edition. I downloaded the
correct Vista version. The documentation states that PowerChute requires
Hibernation enabled, so I have been trying to get Hibernation to work on
my PC, without much success.

APC Support have said I need to turn off Away Mode to use normal
Hibernation settings but I am not sure how to do this. I found reference
to Away Mode in the Power Options under Multimedia settings, and I
believe it may have been turned on some time ago when we experimented
with streaming photos to the TV via the X-Box. We didn't get it to work
properly and I don't use Windows Media Centre (as opposed to windows
Media Player). The Setting is currently "prevent idling to sleep".

Last night I tried Sleep again, with PowerChute installed, and was
unable to wake up the PC. When I pushed the Power button on the PC the
fans started up but nothing else happened. I had to disconnect and
reconnect the power cable to get it to boot, then it came up as if from
hibernation, with the windows open on screen.

I have now uninstalled PowerChute as I simply don't trust it.

To top off the evening, after I shut the PC down for the night, I moved
my mouse connection from a USB hub to a PS/2 adaptor, to free up a USB
port. As soon as I plugged in the PS/2 connector, the machine booted up
without my touching its Power button. Does this have something to do
with Away Mode?

I don't really want to use Hibernate at all, which is why I've never
found up up until now that there are issues with it on my PC.

I'm not very technical, so hope no command line or registry edit stuff
will be needed!


--
foxycat