Check to make sure you have your power option set to enable 'allow hybrid
sleep'. While Vista defaults to this being enabled perhaps it got turned off
at some point.
There have been several threads here discussing the 'correct' use of
sleep/hibernate in a laptop. My OPINION is that a laptop running on battery
should be set to hibernate rather than sleep. My rational has been that the
deep discharge of the battery on the way to hibernate is a bad thing for
battery life. That is not a universally held opinion however.
Michael
"Mugunth" <> wrote in message
news

C805B40-8CD1-4423-9FA6-...
> I've set up my laptop to sleep automatically when the lid is closed.
> But occasionally, (probably due to the loose battery in my Dell 1420),
> while starting up, I get the "Windows was not shut down properly..."
> message
> at booting with some options including
> "Start windows normally", which is selected by default.
>
> As per my knowledge, if a Windows vista PC encounters a power failure
> during
> "sleep", it will resume as if it resumes from a hibernate session. But
> this
> never happens to me. It behaves the same way as it did in XP... (The
> standby
> feature of XP). That's sleep behaves like standby and not the way it's
> expected to behave. what could be the reason? Anyone else facing a similar
> or
> the same problem?