Originally Posted by K4Ice

usually when i put it into standby, it doesn't go into hibernate at all ..it just stays in standby..

I'm not sure what you mean by it bringing me to the last session, but now instead of just popping up my desktop right away, I have to go through the entire boot up state (the windows xp boot up, 'windows is starting up' screena, 'welcome' screen) -- waking up from standby or hibernate brings you back to your last screen or session (like if you have an open Word document, it would still bring you back to that Word document session). the only difference is standby saves it to memory while hibernate writes it to hard drive.

also..I tried to put my computer into hibernate for kicks..just to see what would happen..usually when i open the lid after this, it says 'rebooting in progress' or something like that with a status bar and then my desktop pops up..but when i tried to do this earlier, it instead gave me a black screen with this msg:

"the last attempt to restart the system from its previous location failed. attempt to restart again?
a) delete restoration data and proceed to system boot menu
b) continue with system restart"

-- I am really not sure if this message points a defect in RAM or in hard drive. Try running Memtest86+ overnight to test your RAM modules. If you are using XP, try running CHKDSK /R in Recovery Console using an XP installation CD (retail/full version). In addition to the above, run your hard drive makers diagnostic to test your drive.

i've tried both options and it makes me go through the entire start up process again..