Computer won't wake up

It sounds strange that it should happen irregulary , I would suggest that you check your power settings in windows , Start/settings/control panel/power management
under the power schemes tab the first line that you can change will be power schemes set it to ALWAYS ON , then go down to system standby , set it to NEVER, then go down toturn off monitor, set it to AFTER 15 MIN ( or anything you want ) then go to turn off hard disk, set it to NEVER.
make sure that you have the green power settings DISABLED in the bios .

I've seen similar problems on other W98 boxes.

I suspect that it is a conflict with some of the critical and security updates.

My basic recommendations are to disable automatic standby mode when you are downloading files.

I have also "improved" the situation with cleaning up the windows\temp folder. And, with running a registry cleaning tool.

Since this is basically a shutdown problem, it wouldn't hurt to go through the steps of Windows Shut Down Trouble Shooting.

A decent guide is posted at www.aumha.org

Chas

Two things to check.

One, go into power management in Control Panel and make sure that both the computer and monitor are set to Always On or Never to go into Sleep Mode. These are for conserving power. If you want to conserve power, simply turnthe PC off when you're not planning to use it for an extended period of time and that's when you clean out your cache memory.

Two, check the system BIOS for a sleep mode setting and disable that also.

I had this problem with a PC. Both the BIOS and Power Scheme had sleep mode enabled and the thing just wouldn't wake up!

Hope this helps.

I've seen this happen with screen savers activated. During large downloads, the screen saver kicks in and sometimes absorbs all the computer resources. Then the computer becomes unresponsive.

It's best to disable the screen saver, the task manger (especially if you have things like a defragmentation, or anti-virus complete scans, etc. kicking in after a certain period of "inactivity"), and any other programs running in background before starting a major download. Power off the monitor to prevent burn-in and power on the monitor when you think the download has completed.

Thanks so much for your input...still the same problem after all the attempts to apply your suggestions.
I'm going to post another question. He tried to reinstall Windows over top the previous - problem - our Win98 book is LOST (when he tries to boot up it asks for the CD code - the one he has is incorrect) The vendor of the puter said he sent the CDs back, but John insists that they're still there at the vendors. What is the reigistry key to see what the CD code is?
He can't get past thescreen which asks him for it.
He doesn't want to format the drive as he didn't do backups on it for a while, and he'll loose everything. Went into BIOS- changed the boot order - and tried to boot from another Win98 disk to get him up and going, but the results are still the same.
Any suggestions?