To put Vista to sleep, click on the Windows icon bottom left corner -blue ball with 4 coloured squares. You can choose, standby (powersaving), lock or sleep. Sleep is the little arrow on the right of the bar, next to the padlock.
Vista is a new operating system, and a lot of things that worked previously may not work. Check for new drivers, or replace components. No easy solution-some things have been made obsolete by Vista.

Thanks so much for your help.

I just went down to my landlord's apartment and I was starting to tell her about the standyby mode. She told me "I just phoned Dell and they are sending me someone'. I said "oh, that's good, by the way, did you tell them that you have no sound coming out of your speakers?" and she said: "No I forgot".

So I said "okay, this is important, BEFORE YOU CHANGED THE HARD DRIVE, YOU HAD SOUND, RIGHT?? and she said "right?"

So I then said: 'After the guy put the new hard drive in, did you have sound? and she said "No".

So I said "You need to download new drivers, don't worry it's easy".

She said: "I need to download drivers, what are drivers?"

Sigh.
this is going to get VERY COMPLICATED.

So I think I shall let the guy from Dell come there and do whatever it is the guy from Dell is going to do.

She is exactly where I was 15 years ago, when I got my first PC. I was completely clueless.

Oh well, we have to learn sometime now don't we??

thanks much

Sounds like you are on the right track.
I bought a complete new PC system a year ago and it came with Vista. All was OK until I downloaded video from my camcorder-no sound.

Contacted various people involved with the PC and its components-no luck. Read on Google that Vista is very fussy about sound cards, and generally speaking you need a Vista certified compatible sound card. So the new sound card supplied with the Vista system was not compatible. I had to have a new one fitted.

Old ones may work to some extent, or as in your case, not at all.

It is unwise to put Vista into an older PC. Not only will some components not work properly, but software also.
At last most firms have put out patches for their software. At the start, they hadn't, so just might be lucky. At least now you know what to expect!

Peter:

I have a question.

I have a two year old HP MEDIA CENTER PC, all bells and whistles.

It has Windows XP.

It has stuff on the front of the tower that I have no idea what these things are for, and I don't expect I'll need to know any time soon. I believe they are for camcorder hookups or digital cameras. I have neither. I do use a webcam and upload videos to youtube so I do KNOW SOMETHING. lol

It has all these slots for Smart/Media/sD
MMC/sd
CompactflashI/II
Memory Stick/PRO

So what are these things??

Also it has three holes,
green, pink, and green, and the third one has a little icon of headphones on top (now this is on the Tower).

Now how come there's a place to put headphones, when I already have headphones attached to the monitor?? We always keep headphones because my computer is up against a wall and at night when Alan goes on, he can listen to music and watch videos and no one next door is disturbed.

So why is there a headphone jack on the monitor, and another one on the computer tower??

I'm going to take a photo of this, so you can tell me what all these slots and holes are.

Here's the whole front of my tower.



and here's the closeup of the three holes that I have no clue what they are (except for the headphone jack).



thanks so much if you can tell me what these things are.

Melody... for one.....I am NO computer wizz. I learnt everything I know (and that isn't really a whole lot) from either my daughter or people like these wonderful people in this forum.

I too have a jack for earphones, and I have built in speakers. What I did try last week, was to put a set of ear phones into that jack, and I could hear what was happening, but no-one else could. That's a plus. It gave me sound, and the others got peace & quiet.

I was going to try and answer a bit more of your question as some of your pictures look a bit like the front of my computer, but I didn't want to end up looking like a complete fool.

I hope you get the answers you're looking for.

with vista click on start button like other window products and the window that opens ,on the bottom is a tiny arrow all the way to the right and at the bottom u can select hibernate sleep restart lock change users log off restart and switch users,

as far as what this person rather use, i go to sleep with mine, easier to bring back up and running, one thing i have learned about vista 2 gigs of mem is a very good thing for vista, and from what i have been told the minimum, expecially if you are multi tasking, for some reason vista with one gig of memory tends to lock up, and like jo said u can always go to the power settings and select what you want the hard drives to do the screen to do after x amount of minutes, this is in control panel and yes i am still learning my way around on vista, but ive only had it for a bit over a month,

i have not tried alt F4 yet on vistas to see what it does but in older windows products that would also bring up the menu for restart and ect.....


back yes hitting alt and f4 at same time will close what u are doing, hit it again it will bring up the sleep hibernate window also, so u can use the keystroke of ALT F4

Those slots are for memory cards. There are all kinds...some go with the
complex games people play... for example Memory stickpro is a Sony type.
The others are for other size cards, used for video and digital cameras.
HP has been very aggressive for home media/entertainment computers.
Our Dell does not have those slots, for example. And it is about the same age.
But the new printers DO have those slots so that people can print their photos
directly out of the printer more easily. We bought an external card reader for
about $20 bucks and it does the same thing.


The USB ports are for attaching peripherals. For example the light green one
is for exterior speakers. (like I just got).

You can plug headphones into either tower or monitor.
The fancy computers today can plug into your TV so some of the ports are
for that. We have a clone backup..and it uses one of the ports for example.