Email Support no help... PCPE and Vista questions

[Anonymous user]

Hello,
I have the UPS Back-up ES650. I also have Vista, which I am new at. I just found out by reading the message boards here that you can not allow your computer to go into the 'Sleep' mode to receive a gracefull shutdown by PCPE if an extended power outage should occur. Also read that Hibernation should be enabled to get the PCPE software to work properly. My understanding is that when computer goes into 'Sleep' there's no communication between the computer and UPS because 'Sleep' has disabled the USB connections. Even with the computer going into Hibernation, (reccomended by PCPE) wouldn't that also disable the USB ports too? Hibernation is considered a deeper sleep than regular Sleep mode, but still considered sleep. I like the sleep mode and consider it important because there are many hours of non-use on my computer and don't like the idea of the hard drive and fans constantly running, but want a quick response to my desktop when needed. I know about the Hibernation process of writing everything to disk and then shuts itself down, just how does PCPE do a proper shutdown if computer is in Hibernation? Thank you.

[BillP]

Hi Renee,

It is correct that when the computer is in Sleep more or Hibernate that the USB ports will be deactivated. The big difference is in Sleep mode the memory of the computer is still stored in the RAM and if you lose power all that data will be lost. In hibernate the RAM is written to the hard drive so if power is lost your computer can still restore itself to its last running state. If you want to leave your computer alone and save power its best to go into Hibernate so it wont matter if power is lost. With PCPE if the computer is still up and running, and not in Sleep mode or Hibernate, and needs to be shutdown due to a power outage PCPE will put the computer into Hibernate so when you restart the computer it will return to the last running state.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Thank you so much for your reply! You explained it all to make perfect sense. I now understand how everything works.