Is it okay to use standby/sleep mode?

Hello,

I hope it okay to ask this as it is not really a security question but I wanted to know if it was okay to use standby regularly on your pc? I had a 2004 emachines computer that just died recently and the tech who diagnosed it told me that standby is not good for it and does not recommend using it. I had almost never shut the computer off but just would put in standby and then would reboot every week or two. I did not think that getting almost 4 years from an inexpensive emachines pc was bad at all and until it died the machine never gave me any problems so I am a little skeptical at the tech's advice. This was using XP. Now I have just bought a new pc with Vista and wonder if it is okay to use the sleep mode regularly as Vista does not seem to have standby. Do you not recommend using sleep mode and will it cause long term harm to your computer or shorten its life? If you should not use it what would you recommend? Just leaving on or turning off nightly or something else? It was years ago but I think I started using standby because I had read that always turning on and off was more risky as most problems were at startup or something like that but now I am not sure what to think. One last question; would it make any difference on a laptop?

Thanks for any advice.

roark

 

Well, AFAIK it shouldn´t matter whether you put it in Standby mode or just turn the thing off. I haven´t notice any problems and I have been putting it in standby for 2,5 years now.

Actually, this is one of my frustrations, even with special tweaks/tools, Windows XP sometimes still refuses to go into standby (or to shutdown/restart). This might also be caused by my HIPS, but still, you would think that M$ could build an OS in a way that it can at least shutdown when the users want to, no matter if some process keeps "hanging".

 

Since I am not an Operating System programmer, I cannot support or refute the use of standby mode. I do use it on my laptop many times without incident. I don't know if using it in lieu of shutting the system down has a mechanical impact to the system. I sometimes leave one laptop on for several days (not in standby mode) while I always shut down another one every night. I haven't tried leaving a system in standby mode for more than 1 day. There have been issues raised in the past about turning your system on and off every day and how that causes possible power surges and read/write hard drive arms to fail. Since I have used computers (since the 1980's), I haven't ever experienced a hard drive failure nor complete boot up failure problems. Some people recommend keeping the system constantly running to minimize any chance of read/write failures and power surges. They might be correct about the dangers of shutting the system down repeatedly. However, at least my in situation, shutting the system down daily has no noticable detrimental effect as far as I know.

The hardware between a laptop and desktop is similar, although it is more confined in a laptop, of course. Both types of systems have cooling fans, althougth a desktop may be better at removing heated air because of a more spacious box. I don't think that it makes a difference between the two types.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=175853

 

I seem to lost a PC once where i used a HIBERNATE app constantly for many months. Was it the cause of the computer failure, i'll never know, but i still use the HIBERNATE app on some of my units to a regular schedule of powering off then after some hours powering it back uo again, so far so good.

 

Hello,
If I'm not mistaken, when you use hibernate, the contents of the memory are spilled into the harddisk in plain text, including passwords. Plus, hibernation increases the defragmentation of the drive significantly.
Mrk

 

True, i only use HIBERNATION and apps that set scheduling to it on isolated machines, mostly security monitors.

 

users can have the opposite not coming out of standby and the monitor remaining off. just disable it if its problem. if your windows is corrupt it can get like this.