Richard VA writes:
I purchased a Keyboard that has no “Sleep” button. How can I setup a button to be a “Sleep Button”?
Thanks.
If your keyboard does not have a sleep button, there are a few ways to put your computer to sleep. The easiest is to click the start button, click the arrow next to shut down and click Sleep. This will put your computer in to sleep mode.
The second way is a bit more difficult, but still not that hard. The first step is to open Notepad and type the following line:
rundll32 powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState
Now click File>Save as and change the name to sleep.bat. Also, make sure to change the file type from text document (*.txt) to All Files. Choose your desktop as the location and click save.
Next, right click on sleep.bat on your desktop and click “Create Shortcut.”
Now, right click on Sleep – Shortcut and choose properties. Click in the shortcut key box and hold down a key combination to turn on sleep. Make sure that key isn’t used for something else in windows or it’s a combination of keys (my example is holding down Ctrl and holding down Alt and pressing S).
Click OK.
Next time you press the key combination you set the system will go into sleep mode.
~Tim
Tags: keyboard shortcut sleep, keyboard sleep, keyboard suspend, sleep, suspend
Hi Richard, you could also mention that in the power options in Control Panel you can set the power button to put the computer into sleep mode, or hibernate mode if you prefer. If you have a laptop you can also choose what closing the lid does.
I tried this due to the fact that when I shut my computer down in sleep mode it sometimes will go to sleep and wake up in 10 seconds or so. I decided to try your fix, however, I can not get it to come out of sleep mode. I tried pressing the space bar, mouse and anything else I could think of but to no avail. I then have to push the power button. Is that normal?
Sincerely,
Steven
I have an even better solution–for Windows 7 users.
Go to Control Panel>System and Security>Power Options
and click on “Change what the power buttons do”.
For “When I press the power button” choose Sleep.
By default this chooses hybrid sleep, which keeps power to RAM but also saves an image of RAM on you hard drive in case there is a power outage before you get back to the computer.
Now you can use the power button on your computer to invoke the sleep state. The next time you press it (or any key on your keyboard) your computer will wake up.
Of course, you should shut down completely very often (I do it every night) so that system updates will install and to correct any accumulated damage to Windows 7 operating system. You can shut down by clicking “Start” and choosing “Shut down”. Now the next time you press the power button it will reboot your computer.