My Windows XP will shut itself down if I am away for even a few minutes: Is there a way to increase the time?

If you go to your main desktop background, and right-click, a menu will come up with different options on it. Down near the bottom is the properties option, you should click this. After clicking the properties option, you should see a box with tabs at the top, click "screen saver." While in the screen saver tab, you will see a box entitled "Screen Saver" and a box entitled "Monitor Power", in the "Screen Saver" box, there will be a number with up and down arrows next to it, this allows you to change the time your screen saver will appear and also will slow the time it takes for your computer to go into hibernation. Also, to go directly to the hibernation tab, you will need to click "Power" in the "Monitor Power" tab which will open another box with options. Look for the words "system standby" ,and a box with an amount of time listed. This is what tells your computer to hibernate when left alone for an allotted amount of time. If you change this tab it will lengthen or shrink the amount of time your computer will take before hibernating. Hope this helps, and message me if you need more information!

This is known as hibernation. But usually it does not happens until unless the computer is asked to do so. There might be some changes in the computer's basic power settings. I donot have much idea about this b'coz I am using Win Vista and I have never used Win XP.

I think the solution would be in the Power options of the Control Panel. See if it works

Right click on an empty space in your desktop and click on properties. After you do that click on screen saver. You can either turn the screen saver off or increase the time. Another cause is an option used by laptop users to conserve battery power which is only annoying to us desktop users. On the screen saver tab click on power then under the options or drop down menus you can click on each of them and change the time to your liking or change them all to never like my computer is.

Your computer is going into standby mode. If you dont want this to happen I recomend going into

control panel

power options

Then take off the standby mode and change it to never. Also uncheck anything you dont want your computer to do. Just use the normal screensaver.

go to start>control panel>power options then you can change what your computer does after x amount of time.