just updated to windows 8.1 .

problem is every time i close my laptop & leave it any length of time it shuts down .so when i open laptop up i have to restart laptop 

any ideas on what to do . i have already update the drivers and it made no difference.

I would check your power management profile settings.

hi its says "sleep" when i close the lid . it also has sleep for all other options.

do i need to change them to hibernate 

also what is the difference between sleep and hibernate

have checked on other laptop & it has sleep on all its options.

other laptop is an older machine not running windows 8 

hi its says "sleep" when i close the lid . it also has sleep for all other options.

do i need to change them to hibernate 

also what is the difference between sleep and hibernate

 

When you put the laptop to sleep, everything is powered down apart from the ram which is kept powered to retain your current state.  This means sleep mode is quicker but it uses power although obviously much less than when powered on.

 

When you hibernate the laptop, it takes the current state of the ram, saves it to the hard drive and completely powers down.  Then when you start up, the system restores the ram state and takes you back to where you were.  So it's not as quick as sleep but it doesn't use any power.

 

The first place I'd be looking is in the event logs around the time when you left the machine and see if there's any errors reported which might give you something to go on.  What is exactly happening when you open the laptop up that means you have to restart it, are you just getting a black screen or something?

 

John

just a black screen and both lights at front of laptop go out

Have you checked whether a BIOS update is available for your laptop?

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would have to wait until my boy gets back . he much more up on that type of stuff than me. i do basics then call him

Does it start normally afterwards or does it tell you the world just came to an end?

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it starts normally afterwards . when i open up chrome it says "chrome did not shut down properly do you want to restore " or very similar word . if i do it restores all open tab from before i closed laptop lid

Sounds like windows is shutting down. What happens if you choose sleep under the power menu?

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Sounds like windows is shutting down. What happens if you choose sleep under the power menu?

not quite sure what you mean . it is currently set up to sleep on all 3 menu's 

power /sleep & close lid