Sammie

I have a custom build Windows 7 pro 64x computer and when I click the start button and click the arrow next to "shut down" it only gives me the option to switch user, log off, lock, restart, and hibernate. Sleep is greyed out and I can't click on it. I've checked out online help forums for this topic, but what they tell me to do isn't possible because I don't have the options in the power settings that they're telling me to change. I don't have the hybrid sleep option either. I just installed service pack 1 yesterday to see if that would change anything, and it didn't. I've updated all the drivers including the video drivers. I have the power plan set to balanced, but even after changing it, it doesn't make a difference. I wont use hibernate, if I wanted the computer to turn off, I would turn it off myself. The sleep setting worked just fine a few weeks ago, why did it suddenly decide to stop working and how do I get it to work?

Last spring I received a nasty virus that basically destroyed my hard drive. No matter how many times I reformatted, it still didn't want to work. It was really unstable so it kept crashing making my OS corrupted. So I replaced it, put a fresh Windows XP install on the new hard drive and everything was good. Everything worked but my sound drivers which was no big deal. I was happy I could play things like Minecraft and Spore again. Later on that same day, both stopped working. Just like before, Spore crashes and now Minecraft is making Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome crash. My Java just doesn't want to work. This happened before on the old hard drive too. I'm starting to think it has something to do with another piece of hardware. Maybe my RAM or CPU? I have a single core motherboard, 1GB of RAM, and a 2.21GHz CPU. I know I don't have another virus, the first thing I installed was my anti virus when I reformatted, plus I have already performed a scan which came up with nothing. I also have reinstalled Firefox, Chrome, and Java multiple times. I am really starting to get really frustrated with my computer. I just built it two years ago and it's not working, any ideas to what might be wrong?