T61 (XP Pro) Sleeps Badly

I just got a new T61 and am puzzled by its standby behavior. I put it to sleep using the Fn-F4 shortcut. The screen shuts off and the little standby LED lights up. But after a few minutes, I notice that the LED goes out and I can hear some disk/fan noise. The LED will then cycle on and off every five minutes or so. The machine also gives a faint beep every now and then. It returns from sleep mode normally, prompting me for a password/fingerprint swipe. My old Win2K/Dell Latitude never showed any sign of activity at all when it was in standby mode. It appears that the T61 is not really suspended, or that something is waking it up periodically (checking for email?). Is this normal? Is it something to be concerned about?

Thanks,
Richard

 

It's probably refreshing the network state if you are plugged into the internet or has wireless on prior to sleep.

You can go to device manager and look for the network adapters, then look for the setting "allow this device to wake the computer" under power management tab and uncheck it. Do it for both ethernet and wireless. It worked for me.

 

Thanks, Shift. You were spot on target.