Opening the Power Options dialog box in Control Panel lets you adjust some settings that can make Windows XP easier to use. Here are the adjustments I typically make for a desktop computer.
- On the Power Schemes tab, I choose the Home/Office Desk entry from the Power Schemes list and configure the Turn off hard disks and System standby settings to Never.
- On the Advanced tab, I select Shut down as the default option for When I press the power button on my computer.
- On the Hibernate tab, I make sure there’s no check mark in the Enable hibernation box.
With these settings in place, my computer is running at full speed all the time. I never have an annoying lag when it resumes from standby, and I’m not wasting 2GB or more of disk space (equal to the amount of RAM in my system) on a hibernation file.
Because my portable PC has a battery that needs management, its Power Options dialog box has a completely different group of settings. On this PC I’ve enabled hibernation. I’ve configured the power button so that Windows shuts down when this button is pressed. I’ve told Windows to go into standby when I close the lid on the computer and to hibernate if the computer remains on standby for more than 30 minutes. If I press the Sleep button, I get a dialog box where I can choose whether I want the notebook to go into standby or hibernate.
What sort of power management do you need? Every computer and every individual is different; if you spend a few minutes adjusting these options, you’ll be sure they match the way you work.
Ed Bott 
I’ve found that I need to close all other programs in order to successfully adjust the power management schemes, otherwise I get a message saying “Power Policy Manager unable to set policy: Indicates two revision levels are incompatible” or some such.
Ed, what do you do with your desktop monitor? Do you turn it off manually, set Windows do it automatically, or just leave it on?
Ken, I use the Screen Saver settings to blank my monitor after 30 minutes. When I leave the office for the day, I usually turn the monitors off but leave the computers on to receive e-mail, RSS feeds, and so on.
Ryan, have you seen this KB article? Seems to be the exact same error message. You might want to save your power settings under a custom name.
Oh, awesome. You’d think MS would have had time to fix that one since 2001. I still think I have however, encountered a situation where I had to close programs in order to set power settings… must have been a different error message.
You may have run into a situation where a driver is blocking a change in power settings. Network card drivers can do that. If you are unable to go into standby or hibernate, I would take a serious look at all installed drivers.
This must have occurred to a lot of laptop/notebook users – but there really should be TWO separate options for each of those “Advanced” tab “power buttons” (such as closing the lid): one for when plugged in and one for when on battery power, duh!
Ed, thanks for your response. Why didn’t I think of that? 🙂 I allowed XP to turn off the monitors after 20 minutes, meaning I had them on for no good reason.
I pretty much set my power settings the same way except that I leave hibernation enabled so my UPS software can hibernate the computer during a extended power failure. I usually save everything and close programs when I’ll be away from the computer, but not always…
I’m experiencing a similar issue with a laptop. I am unable to go into standby on my Dell Latitude C600. The error message I am getting says that the device “Mobility M3” will not allow the laptop to go into standby. It also states that the driver may need to be update. I already checked to make sure that I have the most updated driver.
When I hit Stand By, the computer (Dell Dimension 4400 desktop) goes down for a couple of seconds, then reboots. I’ve gone into Power Management and tried to establish settings for Home/Office Desk (after deleting the old one to eliminate getting the “unable to set policy” message as per Microsoft instructions in one of their docs). I hit OK and Apply, but it switches right back to Portable/Laptop with different time settings as soon as I close Control Panel. Any ideas?