Dead or Alive

Q: I have an E-machine. When I was downloading some pictures from my digital camera and made copies of my digital pictures on another folder. I went out and when I came back a few hours later. The power cord had the green light on and so did the monitor, but the monitor is black and the computer does not turn on? What can I do to get it to start? If I can't, is there a way to recover my digital photographs?
G. Lopez
A: The situation as you described it sounds as though your computer may have been in hibernation mode. Hibernation mode is an energy saving feature that cuts back the amount of power to your computer when no activity has been detected for a prescribed period of time. There are two modes that accomplish essentially the same power saving features. Standby mode sends your computer into low power mode when you don’t plan to use it for a short while. A computer in hibernation mode should have a screen that appears to be powered off although the power light to the monitor is lit. The green light is on the power strip because when your computer goes into hibernation or standby mode, your computer is still on. The difference in the two modes can be seen during a power failure. Since the computer is still on, a power failure while your computer is in either of these modes will affect any unsaved information. Hibernation mode powers down the hard drive and the monitor after saving any information that was not saved. Standby mode does not save any information, but your computer can be revived by moving the mouse or pressing a few keys on the keyboard. It is usually easier to press the restart button on your computer when you want to begin working again after hibernation mode. So, if your computer was in hibernation mode as I suspect, then your pictures should be saved.
You can send your computer into standby mode by selecting standby instead of restart or shut down when you are powering your computer off. The amount of time before Hibernation mode kicks in can be set by opening the Control Panel in the Start menu. Next select Power Options, and open Power Schemes. It is here that you can set the time that it begins and what items are affected. When your computer restarts you may want to consider changing these settings for your convenience, or at least become familiar with the settings are currently set at.
If you are unable to restart your computer you may have a larger problem, but you should be able to retrieve your pictures by removing your hard drive and connecting it to another computer. The photos can be saved to another media. Also, you may want to consider downloading the pictures from the digital camera to another computer. This is assuming of course that you have not formatted the flash memory on the camera.