Try the Esc key on the keyboard.

John

With a desktop, the sleep and hibernate modes usualy do not work quite right. Your experience is typical. Instead of sleep, just have the monitor and hard drive shut down and leave the rest running. You can try playing around with the settings, but your chances of success are not good.

Dimension 9100, Dual-Boot Win XP / Vista Home Premium, 3.0 GHz P4, 3 GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM, 160 GB SATA II Samsung (XP), 300 GB SATA II Seagate (Vista), 250 GB SimpleTech USB (WD Drive), Nvidia Go 6800 (425/825 MHz - XP, 400/800 MHz - Vista, Vista Driver - 169.25), Dell 1901 UltraSharp FP

Inspiron E1705, Win Vista Premium, T7200 Core 2 Duo (4MB, 2.0 GHz 667MHz), 2 GB DDR2 677 MHz RAM, 120 GB Samsung HD, Nvidia Go 7900 GS - 156.69 Driver, 17” Sharp UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-Screen WUXGA 

You need to open Power Options in Control Panel and change some of the default settings for your chosen Power Scheme. When the computer goes into Deep Sleep/Hibernation, a brief press of the hardware power button will wake it. Make sure you go to Windows Update and get all the recent Critical Updates. A few of those address this issue and new computers are always a month or so behind on the updates.

Pookie

You can also do as MaryG stated.

Go to Control panel/ Power options.

Then in left column click on What the power button does.

Then click on Sleep.

Then when you want to put it to sleep you just click the power button once and to wake it up you click it again. 

John

You can also click on the POWER button under the START button. It should be set for the SLEEP function by default, but can be changed. This actually works better than automatic SLEEP on some laptops.

Dimension 9100, Dual-Boot Win XP / Vista Home Premium, 3.0 GHz P4, 3 GB DDR2 533 MHz RAM, 160 GB SATA II Samsung (XP), 300 GB SATA II Seagate (Vista), 250 GB SimpleTech USB (WD Drive), Nvidia Go 6800 (425/825 MHz - XP, 400/800 MHz - Vista, Vista Driver - 169.25), Dell 1901 UltraSharp FP

Inspiron E1705, Win Vista Premium, T7200 Core 2 Duo (4MB, 2.0 GHz 667MHz), 2 GB DDR2 677 MHz RAM, 120 GB Samsung HD, Nvidia Go 7900 GS - 156.69 Driver, 17” Sharp UltraSharp TrueLife Wide-Screen WUXGA

Hi

I too hit what I assume was the Sleep button instead of Restart, and my inspiron 530 will not start up again.

ESC does nothing in my case - PC is whirring, monitor dead.  Blue 'power' light on front of PC flashing.

I've switched right off and powered on again three or four times now but the tower just whirs loudly and the monitor does nothing.  If I turn the monitor's power off and on, it briefly shows the message: 'entering powersave mode'

please help, I have now had the PC less than a day and it won't switch on!

thanks

S