Hi!

I have a Dell GX-280 that my daughter uses for a video
server. It connects to my LAN via Netgear wireless NIC.

GX-280 goes into sleep/hibernate mode regardless of
Windows XP SP3 power settings.

Power management cannot be disabled in the BIOS (A08,
the latest)--you have only the choice between
S1 and S3.

S1 and S3 are not timeouts, nor will they "force" a power saving mode
to take place. S1 and S3 are simply different "sleep" levels...S3
being a "deeper" sleep than S1. It's still up to the OS to actually
engage these modes. The BIOS does not do that.

I strongly suspect you have a software problem of some sort...that for
some reason, XP is ignoring the timeout values you have specified.
Have you checked to make sure that the user making the changes
actually has the right to do so? Are the machines sitting idle at the
log-in screen? (Windows XP may not propagate your power settings to
every user.) Is there any software running on these systems that might
be enforcing a power policy, such as Dell QuickSet?

You will find that a lot of systems only let you pick from S1 and S3,
as just about every modern system supports these levels of power
management.

William