Windows Vista XP & Vista weird hibernate headaches

I've installed Vista RC1 in dual-boot with XP Pro and now I have a weird problem in both OS's: Every time I press ALT the system goes to stand by/hibernate. Even pressing ALT + HOME in my browser send the system to hibernate mode. It's the same when I play Need For Speed or use VMWare.

What do you think about this problem? Any suggestions on how to fix it? If I can't fix it, I'll just have to format the Vista partition in the hope that this will fix XP.

Thank you for your replies!

 

It sounds like you have a shortcut key combo set for hibernate. Alt+something and the something key might be stuck? I'm not aware of any shoutcut keys native to windows for this (there may be) but perhaps your keyboard drivers support this. If you have any keyboard software installed, have a look there to see if it has options for using shortcut keys for this.

 

It's not a combination. Pressing ALT alone or in combination with any other key sends my system to hibernate, so ALT is the sole culprit. I don't have keyboard software installed.

 

I realize that it's only the alt key that causes it. That was my point about a shortcut key. For example, if you had a shortcut key to go to hibernate mode and that key combo was alt+F1, it would be possible that the F1 key was stuck. So, everytime you pressed alt, it would react the way you described.

Having said that, if that's not the problem I don't know what to say. Perhaps somebody else will have an idea or two. The fact that it happens in both OS's would seem to indicate that it's keyboard related though. Do you have another keyboard you can try?

 

How do I find out if I have a key combo for hibernate? I've never used hibernation before and I didn't set the shortcut combo. Are these shortcuts listed somewhere?

 

What kind of keyboard do you have?

 

The Enable Hibernation checkbox is unchecked in XP and I remember turning off hibernation in Vista as well (to free up disk space).

 

Disable standby is it isn't already.

 

It's an ordinary A4Tech keyboard. I've never had this problem before.

 

Well, the problem seems to have gone away automagically. Maybe it's because I uninstalled VMWare Player and installed the newest version, or because I formatted the Vista RC1 partition and installed 5728 directly from the HDD. Or maybe I'm too ignorant to be able to identify the cause.

Thank you all for your help!