Xp Going into hibernate

[pmar2uk]

I have a very annoying problem at the moment in that my power management has been set to shut down my laptop after about half an hour of not being used.
As i do not want it to shutdown when on mains power i went to the power applet in control panel , only to find that whenever i click on the power icon , i get an exception occurred message and it will not let me access the option , so i cannot change my power options .
This is very annoying as i use a VPN to link into work and when it hibernates it breaks the active connection .
Can someone tell me how to restore this option or use another utility to control the power,as i want it to blank screen after 30 mins of no use and so forth ,

Many thanks

Peter

[EzyStvy]

Try making the change in safe mode.

[faulkner132]

1. Make sure you are logged in as an Administrator account.
2. If you are, try opening Power Management via Start > Run > powercfg.cpl
3. Google the error message you get to see if you can find any info.

[Panama Red]

I'm just going to guess that your laptop is owned by the company you work for or the company IT folks had your personal laptop so they could set it up to access their network. In either case, I'm also guessing those same IT folks have taken over the Admin capabilities on that laptop and that's what is preventing you from making any changes. If my assumptions are correct, you'd be best to contact the company IT folks and have them tell you how to make the change in the power mgmt settings.

[systempat]

If it had the privileges locked out by company IT support, the system should give a denied message saying 'no privileges' or 'insufficient privileges' instead of an exception.
Can you give us the exact exception message?
If you go thru the Start Run > Control Panel > Power Options does it make any difference?