Sometimes my Dell XP desktop freezes

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

and then goes to the opening screen but does not allow either user to click on their icon or get back into Windows. It will not shut down and you have to manually turn it off. Usually this happens if the computer is on but unattended for awhile, but yesterday it did it right in the middle of my husband watching some company training videos.

Any ideas? I just got a new laptop so this computer is now the back-up. I've been thinking of re-formatting it just because it has always seemed like the world's buggiest computer.

[hobbit709]

1. Sounds like it's going into sleep/hibernate mode

and not coming out of it-that happens a lot in XP. I usually turn that off on a desktop and on a laptop I set it to only do it on battery power.
It seems to start happening more often after one of the Windows updates but I don't know which one.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. I don't ever set up my computers to do that automatically, but where would I look to

check those settings? You, know, I think it did start happening after an update.

[hobbit709]

3. Control panel, Power options should do it.