Capacitors

This morning I woke up and went to go check my mail when I noticed my computer would not come out of standby (after 2 hours I have it set to automatically go into standby).

I restarted the computer and it would show the mobo screen (technical terms) and it would freeze there, push DEL to enter set up... sure! I pressed it and nothing happened.

So I called up my buddy and he had me reset my capacitors by unpluging the PSU and pushing the power button.

Why did this happen?

Perhaps they are holding too much power for the mobo circuit at the moment, and by leaving the computer on standby for a long while, their charge had no where to go to, unlike when the computer is on normally (complete circuit) or shut off (none at-all, power discharged in shutdown I assume).

I'm not sure about un-plugging the PSU though because the charge still has no where to go

unplugging the psu is what solved the problem.

I do think I have some wiring problems because last week i flipped on my light and lost my video card, restarting was fine, but I've put off fixing that... don't think that really has anything to do with this though.

I really dont know what causes that to happen but doing what you did discharges the whole circuit and can solve a lot of problems like yours

I would advise that if you know you're not going to be near your computer you turn it off or give it something to do. I've found that having windows automatically do stuff tends to not like you afterwords.

all things considering. If your computer is having these issues and you are footing the electricity bill where you live I'd suggest you either turn it off to really save power, or you pop a DVD in and set it to replay when your not at the computer. In most cases standby is just a reasonable idle method but if its causing you grief don't use it.
Unplugging the PSU and pressing or holding the front power button would cause all the capacitors to discharge through the circuit this would enable you to then plug the psu back in and have everything work like normal.

Hmm, well this only happened that one time and i've had my computer in the same config go into standby a few times since then w/o having any electrical problems. I will most likely be rewiring my entire computer today and spending some time working on power management for the problem with my lights being on the same circuit as my video card causing some kind of surge, either way thanks for the help!

why not get a battery back up sounds like you have a short

rem desktops wern't really designed to go into standby for long periods of time