Compaq Presario V6101US

Hi,

New to forum. Would appreciate any help I can get.

Bought a new Compaq laptop and use it like a desktop. There is an external mouse, keyboard, and monitor attached. I use it with the lid closed. From reading on the internet there could be a heat problem operating it with the lid closed, so I'm going to buy a laptop cooler. Where I use it I just don't have the room to leave the lid open.

My problem is this. When I'm not using it like maybe overnight, I put it into standby mode. The next morning neither my mouse nor my keyboard will wake it up. The laptop is underneath a stand, so I have to slide it out, lift the lid to wake it up, and then slide it back. What I would like to be able to do is use the mouse or keyboard to wake it up. The external keyboard has a power, sleep, and wake key. The sleep key works. The other two do nothing. The keyboard is a Belkin. Normally I put the system into sleep using XP rather than the keyboard.

The keyboard is attached to a powered USB hub. I've tried going into the USB root hubs to allow the power to stay on when in standby mode. I've read a lot about going into BIOS to make adjustments, but unless I'm looking in the wrong place there just isn't that much in BIOS to adjust. I have not found anything in BIOS to help me with power mgmt or waking from standby. Makes me wonder if there is another section of BIOS I'm missing. There are a few sub-menus, but nothing to help me with the problem I have. By the way, I'm running XP media edition.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

I don't think you can get your external keyboard to wake your computer from standby. There is a setting that you can use to allow an individual component to bring the computer out standby - however, it only appears for some devices, like Network adapters, and not for others - see attached.

As far as dispersing heat goes - the lid should be open, ideally, but if that's not possible, can it be open just a bit? That would help. A cooling pad sounds like a good idea assuming you can fit one under the notebook.

 

Chaz,

Thanks for your response. I sent an email to another poster that had the same problem I believe back in Feb. They upgraded to Vista and apparently Vista has that functionality. Having purchased my laptop recently, supposedly I qualify for a price break on a Vista upgrade. Since everything I read tells me the same thing you did concerning XP, I believe I will take advantage of the Vista upgrade. That should fix my problem.

Thanks again.