Two seperate Stand By issues

[nedthehead]

I have two old CRT monitors which work fine, but suck up some energy. Both of my computers have stand by issues:

1: On my new computer, the machine won't standby. When I hit Stand By or tell it it to stand by after X minutes of inactivity, it will always freeze at the "Preparing to Stand By" screen. Sometimes the monitor will turn off, but when I hit a key to turn it back on, it is stuck at that screen. Maybe something in the BIOS? But I was able to Stand By before I reformatted my computer.

2: On my old computer, the machine won't wake up from stand by. It will sleep fine no matter what way I tell it to, but it won't wake up. I've tried shaking the mouse, pressing all of the keys, ALT+CTRL+Delete, but nothing will wake it.

My solution to both of the problems right now is to reset the computer (both computers), but that's not very efficient.

Any ideas?