This problem has finally gotten the better of me, after nearly a year of dealing with it. Last summer i built a custom desktop PC and i cannot for the life of me figure out how to get this thing to sleep properly. I have Windows 7 Professional 32 bit installed on it if its any help. So when i go and hit the sleep button in the start menu it turns off the display and begins backing up my session on the harddrive like it should but it never gets past that stage. i can leave it for an hour and i come back down to it and its still spinning the harddisk and running all the components. The fans dont even turn off and the it goes into an unresponsive state that i cant get it out of without pulling the plug. in short it never fully goes to sleep and i cant get it out of the state it goes into without turning the thing of manually by ripping out the power cord or pressing the power button for four seconds. i never really payed much attention to it at first and my computer starts up pretty fast so its not too much trouble to turn it all the way off but i didnt really realize how useful sleep mode was until i didnt have it. and after a year barren of it im tired of pussy footing around the problem. does anyone know how to fix this? and is it possible there is actually a component i didnt install because i remember back to the motherboard instructions something about a quick boot bridge or something like that?

well actually never mind guys, sorry for wasting your time here. the world wide web with Google helped me fix this problem. for the record there were actually 3 contributing factors to my improperly working sleep mode: 1. I did not have the SMU chipset drivers for the motherboard 2. There were several components that were not working properly (windows troubleshooter and update fixed them right up) 3. BIOS has a setting for power management during standby: S1 Power setting allows the computer to enter sleep mode but keeps critical componets running, therefore requiring a cooling system S3 Power setting allows the computer to enter sleep mode with minimal component activity allowing the fans to be turned off safely so for similar problems, make sure all components of your computer are accounted fro and have the proper drivers. also make sure to install an SMU chipset, especially on a custom built system like mine which does not have an OS preinstalled. you will also need to go into the BIOS setup and look for power management options which should allow you to change stand by modes. the recommended stand by mode is S3, especially if your desktop is like mine and has 8 fans. not exactly going to sound like a sleeping baby.