Windows won't sleep

I know that there are a few similar topics up on the discussion board, but I
think that my case is different. Some people are having a problem where when
their computer has finished sleeping, it jerks back into life. Upon
completing a few updates a couple days ago, neither my laptop OR my desktop
will successfully sleep. When i click on the sleep button in the start menu,
the desktop screen goes black, pauses, and then comes back to the welcome
screen. While it may seem that something is telling it not to go to sleep,
when i tried such an experiment (trying to abort the sequence of sleeping)
before this problem (a couple months ago) it would take AGES for the computer
to abort the process and come back to the welcome screen... Now it is
immediate. And further, when my laptop is plugged in, it behaves exactly the
same, except that it waits until you touch the pad or a key before the screen
will come back on, but it audibly never actually turns off. When it is
unplugged, it will sleep however. I have checked out the setting mentioned
on another thread where it was recommended to look under "Power options>plan
settings>advanced options>multimedia settings>(setting allowing computer to
sleep while sharing multimedia)" but neither computer will sleep even with
this setting changed (it had originally been set to not allow the computer to
sleep while multimedia sharing).

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks!

David

So...update. I just attempted to put my computer to sleep again, and instead
of doing anything, it hung in the "getting ready to go to sleep" stage. The
fans were still turning, my keyboard's backlight was still lit up, but my
monitor didnt detect a signal, and the light on the front of my computer was
flashing in its one second cycle that it does when it is asleep. I attempted
through mouse movements to wake it up, then used the keyboard, but nothing
helped, it just stayed in limbo. After a few minutes (far longer than it has
ever taken to go to sleep) i attempted to shut the computer down by pressing
and holding the power button. It clicked off, the fans shut down, but my
keyboard backlight was still on (its powered by the USB port from the
computer). The light on the front also kept flashing its constant pulse. I
had to resort to shutting the power supply off before i could get the
computer into a fully shut down state. When i turned the computer back on,
there were no error messages, but it gave me the "resuming windows" message
that I get when i have had the computer in hibernate...I understand this is
because of the hybrid sleep, but why did the computer successfully go to
sleep, but leave the fans and keyboard on?

Any help would be appreciated!

David

Sorry, note that the computer mentioned in the 2nd post is my desktop.

Oh boy...So I found out that indeed my desktop WILL sleep. It for some
reason now takes about 5 minutes to do so however, whereas it previously only
took about one minute. If anyone has tips on that, advice is welcomed.

The problem does still remain with my laptop. How do I get it to go to
sleep when its plugged in?

Thanks and sorry!

David