I need help with my IT people. And Dell.

I think I might have posted the actual problem before. I have a Dell laptop that I use at work, both in a lab and in the field. When I turn it on, either from "off" or "sleep" or "standby" or "hibernate" I get the message

"Press CTL-ALT-DEL to start".

Then the password request comes up. Then I enter the usename and password and the desktop shows up. Then I can use the computer. Recently, any attempt to press CTL-ALT-DEL at the start would be ignored. It would just sit there, laughing. Rebooting sometimes helped, sometimes not. The problem was random and intermittent. I found out it was still under warranty and asked our IT to send it back. This is the reply I got.

""I called Dell Technical Support and Repairs this week regarding the problem you are having with the laptop. They said the laptop MUST be shutdown properly EVERYTIME it is used, otherwise it hibernates and will not wake up unless the "power button" is held down for a long time.

You cannot just close the lid between uses. The BIOS does not support that action. Even if hibernation is turned off in the operating system (XP) the BIOS overrides it.

Before they will consider looking at it under warranty they need to know if the problem occurs when the laptop is properly "shut down" when it is not being used. Please ensure that everyone follows the XP shut down procedure.""

Does that make any sense? I am not a geek but I think that the BIOS's job is done once the OS is fired up. It is not failing to wake up. It is waking up just fine. It won't let me in once it has woken up, that's the problem. (It's not the keyboard, apparently.)

Before I talk to them I want to make sure I'm right about that. The OS is XP Pro. It's a Dell Latitude.

Thanks