Power-down messing with x-windows?

[Lyle A. Bialk]

Several weeks ago I installed Suse on my new Dell Dimension 2400. I ran
into several problems, including the fact that if the computer was left
on, unused for a period of time, I could not get it to display anything
but a blank screen. I would have to end up powering down.

I've since installed FC1 in place of the Suse. And am pleased that more
things are working "out of the box", including sound!

I am still having problems however with the power saving. If the monitor
and computer go into energy saving mode, I cannot get the monitor to
wake up, I'm assuming it's a problem with  x-windows starting again. I
can ctrl-alt-del to force a re-boot, but then the first part of the boot
goes ok, gets through the text based portion, but as soon as it gets to
the graphical portion, I get just a blank screen or a screen with
multi-colored bars at the top. If I reboot from the floppy boot disk,
everything starts fine, and I can again re-boot normally without
problem.

I have checked my bios settings to disable the power down, but the
options are to choose either mode s1 or mode s3. There is no info about
what these mean, either in the help files or the documentation that came
with the computer. Any assistance or suggestions anyone could give would
be appreciated. 

I have decided to try Linux as my primary OS, reserving a windows set-up
for the rare occasions I have to use some proprietary software for a
specific purpose. I have been playing around with various distros of
Linux off and on since RH 5.2 and this is the first group (Fedora,
Mandrake 9.2, and Suse 9.0) that appear to be viable for me to basically
take over for windows - YES!!!!

Again, any help would be appreciated.

Lyle