Thread: Shut down not sleep

I have a Toshiba notebook computer with Vista Home Basic. I wish to make the computer shut down on pressing the off button. No matter how often I set the power options to do just that it always decided that it will sleep. Is there something that I am doing wrong?

Microsoft has decided that Vista does not need to shut down as often as previous versions and so the power button in the Start menu only puts the notebook into a sleep mode. The annoyance is that the notebook still uses the battery in this mode. We regularly found our notebook battery completely drained until we worked this one out.
One solution is to use hibernate instead of sleep. In this mode everything in the system memory is saved to the hard disk and the computer switches off properly. Starting again is much faster than from scratch.
In theory Windows should automatically move from sleep to hibernate after a certain amount of time. Skipping sleep altogether will save battery life. This is at the cost of the notebook taking longer to shut down but on our notebook the different was only around eight seconds. And we saved far more battery life than eight seconds by doing this.
Left-click on the Start button and then Control Panel. This walkthrough assumes you are using the default Vista Control Panel. Those using Classic View should click on Control Panel Home to follow these instructions. It is easy to change back afterwards.

Click on the Mobile PC icon and then on Change what the power buttons do in the Power Options section. The next window lets you select between the different options for the various buttons on the notebook.

If the computer is shared with other people it may be worth telling Windows to ask for a password when it starts again. Click on 'Change settings that are currently unavailable'. Click on continue in User Account Control. Click on the option 'Require a password'. Click on Save Changes when happy with the set up. This does not change what the power button in the Start menu does. Return to Control Panel and then click on Hardware and Sound, then on the green text of the title Power Options.

Click on Change Plan settings in the plan that you use, this was Power Saver on our notebook. Click on Change Advanced Power Settings. Click on the small plus next to 'Power buttons and lid' to expand the menu and then on the plus next to 'Start menu power button'.

Windows can behave differently depending on whether power is connected our not. Click on the text of the current behaviour to expand the menu. Select the desired option - either shutdown or hibernate for both On battery and Plugged in. If you switch between different power plans, click on the drop down menu at the top of this window and then set the options again. Click on OK to save the changes.