To all you computer experts out there!

My laptop computer is causing me problems. When it's left in standby, it doesn't want to reload when I come back to it. I get the screen to click on my name to restart, but then the screen is blank, although it is backlit (I hope that's the right way to describe it - the screen is black, but not dead). Sometimes, if I wait five minutes or so, it comes back to life but many times my only option is to turn it off which I assume is not good for the machine and is certainly not good for my temper.

Are there any simple things I can check before taking it to an expert? Once it's up and running, everything seems fine.

What operating system do you have? Windows7?

No, it's Vista on this one.

I can't help because of never having used Vista, owned a laptop or experienced the problem. Other than that, I'm very qualified to answer. ...but seriously, the only thing I can suggest before spending money is to do a search using the term 'vista does not wake up from sleep'. This is what the problem seems to be. You will find you're not alone and there are a few suggestions to be found. Might be worthwhile doing before going further. This Microsoft article could be relevant:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930091

If you don't find helpful hints at that site, this may work. Redefine all the Power control settings. Go through My Computer, Screen saver, and also power control (times to stand-by and times to shut down). Sometimes updates to older operating systems revert the settings to factory positions and some re-toggling may be needed to get things right. I would suspect that before worrying about a hardware failure beginning in the laptop itself. Another thing with laptops that are old is that peripherals (the batteries or the charger) might be starting to fail. Do you have a friend who has the same charger wattage, volts, amps and connector as yours? If at shut down the unit fails to come back up, it may not have gotten enough of a charge boost. I have had two portable DVD players go bad and you'd swear it was a player problem but in both cases it turned out to be a twisted too many times break in the lead just before the unit and so no charge was getting to it. $15 at Radiohut/building (wink wink) got a new charger and connector to keep me up and running. At least do a visual on the wiring for any breaks or signs of usage stress. A voltmeter could tell you if the connector that goes into the laptop has any voltage to give.

Thanks, guys. I'll have a look. It's a recent problem on a machine which has been working fine, so I'm hoping it's not too serious.

If you look at some of the google results, you may see references to updating the video driver and/or updating/changing the driver for the lid. I'd be wary of the latter but making sure drivers are up to date is always a good idea.

If you can't fix it easily, I suggest that you turn sleep off - and when you're going to be away from the computer for a few hours, shut it down. It won't take you any longer to go through the start up process than it has done trying to wake it from sleep, and all computers should be powered down regularly, even laptops. In fact, especially laptops - some of them have had a nasty habit of battery fires if left on too long.

Good luck!

New advise needed:
I used my Facebook album for my avatar before with no problem. Now I can't get it to work properly. The http code is too long. Has something changed?

Can't you best answer that question: "Has something changed?"
fB may have some 'passing on' privacy setting once you change the location you are internetting from. Try reloading the image onto your fB photo album in your new location. The extra digits may be due to the new physical location of your machine code compiler and defragmentingizer. IOW, try redefining the address that FT goes to to find your avatar. That can be done at your end or try loading the new address into the FT Profile avatar definition box.
Why the heck use fB as a photo storage facility? In the US, photobucket works darn fines all I'm sayin'.

I did do a reload but it didn't work. I used FB because my pics were already there and it worked. The avatar showed up during my trip down, if I remember correctly.
But it's gone now. I was trying to avoid opening up yet another account, on photobucket.

You might try uploading via another browser... I can't upload avatars to the Forum using Chrome but it works fine with Firefox.

I interpret your doing 'a' reload means you only did one end (and I suspect it was on your end that you did it). Try the other end. The two places to reload: on fB and on FT.

@flopsy: I can see his avatar here in the Forums. His Quizzyland avatar isn't showing up. There's just one of those 'can't load image' x-boxes. If we and he can see his here and not there, his browser isn't likely the source of difficulty. As he said the address to his image has become a lot longer. I hope my advice gets him the same source url posted at both the send and receive ends of the linkage.

If the URL of the image is pasted into the Address Bar of any browser, the information given is that the content cannot be found. It therefore looks as if the image isn't being found on Facebook and the problem isn't with FunTrivia.

One thing you could do is to try remedying what the error says. The image name forms part of the URL The image certainly has a long file name at present (553102_10151336046439255_913110965_n.jpg). The entire URL could be shortened by giving the image a shorter file name. The procedure would be to download the image to your computer, rename it to something shorter, upload it again and then link to the renamed image to see if it shows here.

I don't know much about Facebook but wonder if an image located there can only be seen if logged in? The Funtrivia forum of course doesn't log into Facebook, so perhaps can't access the image for that reason.

I can't find any information about direct linking to images on Facebook from another site but if that isn't allowed, it might lead to Facebook preventing the image being linked to.

All just theory but just offering some possibilities to look into.

The issue is with his Quizzyland avatar. (553102_10151336046439255_913110965_n.jpg) is the number associated with the Forum avatar and it seems to work fine.
The problem may be that the location for his access before was a different country and those access urls are now different since he is in a different location (look at who he is team leader for (Funsters) and compare to his current profile location, which is different than it was a time ago.) The number I see when I look at the properties of the x-box on Quizzyland reads http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152695983844255&set=a.10151225441344255---. That dash dash dash disappears when I highlight to copy the address and I do not se --- on the working Forums avatar. Maybe that is an unacceptable url ending facebook is putting on the image to track it down? Facebook is currently changing a lot of coding to enhance its privacy and maybe the --- prevents people from accessing/copying other people's photo album entries?

I've been all over the map now. I broke down and opened a photobucket account, changed my FT location back to my home, then changed it back. Then I opened the Forums profile and changed the location to my winter home so it would match. I don't know what else to do. I keep getting this message.

My Profile: Change values below and then 'Submit'

What values do they mean?
Everything was fine a couple of weeks ago.

I don't know what might have changed but it doesn't seem to be at the FunTrivia end. Others would be having the same problem if this was the case.

It might be helpful to see what a link to an avatar image should look like in the FunTrivia forum options. Below is a link to a screenshot showing my own settings and URL (screenshot is hosted on Photobucket but the avatar image is located on the free web space provided by my ISP). If your own settings look similar, then your avatar should show in the forum.

http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u78/Mart44/marts-graphics/atr_zps4596b94e.png

Before putting your avatar's URL into the forum options, right-click on it and choose 'Properties'. Copy the entire URL shown there. Paste the URL directly into your browser's Address Bar and press 'Go'. The image should show. If this doesn't work, then the Funtrivia forum software won't be able to find the image either. See if you can get this part working first.

Have you emptied your browser cache recently? This is worth a try. Browsers with very full caches can sometimes give trouble with displaying images. Also, when you can't see an image that you think should be there, try refreshing the page.

Edit: The point about the browser cache and page refreshing may be relevant even though others aren't seeing your avatar. It could be possible that, if you find the solution to the problem, your own browser still might not show the avatar due to a full cache, or that the page needs refreshing. If this was the case, you might move on to trying something else thinking that whatever had been tried hadn't worked.

Perhaps an unlikely point but all avenues need to be explored and confirmed.

After you make changes be sure to reboot your computer so the new settings take hold.
Good idea to load an FT based avatar to show you can have one. Still seems to be an addressing issue based on your move from one country to another. Using photobucket will allow you to move anywhere and your photos will have the same constant address. Now you've lost your Forums avatar. Did you get it loaded onto photobucket? Trial and error as a methodology to determine the correct image format to paste from Photobucket to FT's 2 url boxes should get you back in our faces.

Did you have your visa properly stamped to bring foreign avatars into the US? Homeland security may be cracking down on you snowbirds and well they should, what with the cold and snow you travel down here with.

Now I see that your Forum address bears the same --- after it that your Quizzyland one had. Could your ISP be adding that onto your location? Is your ISP aware that you have changed locations?

edit @ TW: FYI on Facebook they assign the image file name not the user. You can add titles and note names on an image but the file name is up to facebook as far as I know and have experienced.

I've never had a Facebook account, so thanks for the information. Facebook certainly give images long file names but I suppose if they are giving file names/numbers to the thousands of images uploaded to their site, file names are bound to get longer and longer.

With the image uploaded to Photobucket, difficulties should have gone away now. It ought to be just a case of copying the URL of the image hosted on Photobucket and putting it into the forum options as shown in the screenshot ..hopefully.

Glad to give some knowledge and that is the spirit I extended the info, not to say anything was said wrong. With fB loading millions of images, checking file name uniqueness would be sooo consuming when they can just issue a file name/number from their end. Anyhow, I just visited an update on ssabreman's fb timeline where he loaded several images to fB.I note on some of ssabreman's facebook image that they are at an https address. Doesn't that 's' prevent some access to the files therein?
All should be fine with photobucket urls for the images. But I suspect his change of country/location isn't going through his ISP without some screwing up happening. I think the 80x80 pixels is an issue that may be interfering with the loading here in the forums. Terry did away with size limits in the Quizzyland image definitions, but the Forums are still restricted by UBB definitions which is where trial and error will getan answer. The image may need to be resized before photbucketing it but eventually, if there isn't an ISP issue going on, he should be delivering his sabrejet over our landscape soon.

I notice Photobucket do the same with file names but manage to keep the string quite a bit shorter than Facebook does.

That screenshot I did has been given the name of 'atr_zps4596b94e.png'.

I think that photobucket keeps of the user's file name and then possibly takes the first three alpha/numeric of that name and has a set of numbers to assign from those three which cuts down the number of digits needed while still insuring a unique number. Are we discussing hacking topics? Oh my.

No, just the way that organisations name image files that account holders can link to for display purposes in forums and blogs.

I can tell you why your Photobucket image isn't showing in the forum, and that's because you have used a link to the thumbnail of the image rather than the link to the image itself. Go back to Photobucket, click on the thumbnail, and the image will open fullsize. To the right of the image there should be a column headed "Share Links" - find the box labeled "Direct" and click into it. The box will go yellow and the word "Copied" will appear. That means the link has been copied to your clipboard. Come back to FT and paste the link, using CTRL+V, into the relevant box(es), making sure there are no spaces in the box to the right or left of the image.

Ssabreman, are you using a proxy server to connect to your ISP back in the old country?

I had opened the pic full size but may have used the wrong link. I have rebooted my computer and all is working now. The sabrejet is flying again.

Thanks mehaul, TW and flopsy for your help.