power saving mode

[Yersmay]

I am new to XP and I'm certainly no whiz at this anyway... But I'm curious. First, it is not clear to me what the difference is between 'Standby' mode and 'Hibernation' mode. Also, just when the computer begins to 'sleep' a bar comes up on the monitor... there are three colors -- red, green, and blue. At first, the computer said it was in the blue mode of power saving. Now, for some reason (I haven't changed any settings, at least not on purpose) it now registers as being in the green mode of power saving. What are these different modes? If there is an advantage of one to another, how do I find the settings?
Thanks in advance!!

[norris_309]

The main difference between Standby and Hibernate is that the former stores the Desktop state on your PC's physical memory while the latter stores it on your hard disk.
Using the Hibernate function will protect you from data-loss in case of a power failure.
Although will take longer to wake, whereas standby would awaken alot faster as it's not totally shutdown.

As for the Bar on your monitor, the three colours normally appear to indicate that there is no video signal going to the monitor.
Not too sure about different colours meaning different power saving modes.