Debugging Sleep Problems

Y_not

I have from time to time machines that just won't sleep on their own.
They can be put to sleep manually, or set to sleep /w Sleeper.exe in the XP
DDK tools.

Tracing what is resetting the idle state & thus causing the machine not to
go to sleep on it's own can in some cases be nearly impossible once many of
the common variables are eliminated.

It comes down to a "hunt and peck" looking for the culprit.

I have done some research and came across the tool mentioned above from the
Windows XP DDK v2600.1106
in the dir: "..\tools\acpi\sleeper\x86" is the tool: "sleeper.exe".
Pretty nifty, but It doesn't seem to show any types of failures other than
status messages on sleep states, as to whether it entered said state, or
resumed from it.

I have read the documentation included, what little is there, and it
mentions attaching and breaking into a debugger.
I don't know if this is necessary, or even how to do it if it is necessary.
Will this tool do what I want? If no, please specify, if yes, how to go
about it would be awesome.

I did find the Windows Server '08 DDK v6001.18001.
In it is a tool that replaces "sleeper.exe" in XP, however despite what the
MS site leads you to believe it won't run on XP, only Vista/Server '08.

So that tool's out & I guess I'm stuck with "sleeper.exe".

Pls. help.

PS. I'm not a developer, just a self employed IT guy. I felt this was the
best place for my question, since it's a developer tool I'm inquiring about.
So please bear with me.

--
Thx.
Y_not