I like to use my sleep button alot until recently it stopped working. There was a thunderstorm about a week ago and my computer was in standby over night and when i woke up the next morning, my computer was turned on. Later when i tried to use the sleep button, it just says "Preparing to stand by...." with the blue windows screen and never shuts down. My only solution to this is to hold down the power button till the computer turns off but i imagine that this is not too good for the computer. I've gone into the control panel > power managment and made sure that the sleep button is set to stand by, but it still won't go into stand by after i press it. I'm not an expert with the BIOS, but i've looked in there and i've reset it to default settings. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Why not just Start -> Turn off computer... and press "Turn Off?" I've encountered computers that never came out of stand by which is why I don't use it and always recommend shutting down instead of stand by.

If you use hibernate instead, all your settings are saved if your computer has to be shutdown, as they are written to the hard drive.

I agree with Ford though, I don't think I have EVER used either standby or hibernation.

Depending on which level of 'standby' you're using it's possible the file that stores computer/memory status was corrupted. That would prevent going into hibernation...if that's what going into 'standby' is doing. Some people and articles tend not to adequately distinguish between "standby" or "sleep" or "hibernation" and they aren't all the same.

In one mode, the system state is preserved in RAM, and the RAM is kept powered-up. Getting back to where you were is quite fast. In the other the system state is stored on the disk and electronics can be powered-down. The system's restoring back to where you were requires a bit more time.

There may be a way to disable the feature, delete the hiberfil.sys, and then re-enable it to restore the hiberfil.sys

I've not tried that in a long time, so can't say it would work for sure. On some notebooks you used to have to run a special utility program to create the hibernation file.

Otherwise, a re-install or re-format and restore from a backup may be required.

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The problem could also be due to hardware damage from the electrical storm. Certain components simply may no longer properly respond to commands to go quiescent and the system just sits there waiting for a response or status that never comes.

In this case, try simplifying your configuration to the minimum required to test the 'standby' mode. Disconnect external devices, all but the system disk, remove un-needed PCI adapter cards, etc. Basically treat it as though you were debugging a system problem. See if a minimum configuration will allow you to enter into and return from 'standby'.

Selected quote instead of edit for above post. Vision isn't very good tonight.

G0 - Working mode

G1 - 'Sleeping' - which is divided into 4 'S' modes

S1 - Most power hungry mode, Power On Standby
S2 - CPU is powered off, not really used at all.
S3 - Standby or Suspend to RAM
S4 - Hibernation or Suspend to DISK

G2 - Soft Off

G3 - Mechanical Off