How to control the time before Windows 7 wakes from standby and hibernates?

Question

Ever since I reformatted my laptop, it just hasn't been the same. Before reformatting I noticed that if it was in standby for around 24 hours, it would automatically wake up and go into hibernation. I think that's a pretty cool feature and I didn't mind it.

But lately, it's been waiting only a few hours (maybe 3-6; I haven't really timed it or paid enough attention) before waking up from standby and going into hibernation. There have been a few instances where this has been bothersome, and I'd like to change it back to a nice long wait time.

Where is this setting? What setting in Windows controls the time before the computer wakes up from standby and goes into hibernation?

Edit: maybe this is an uncommon thing, caused by my drivers or something. I'm not sure if my laptop can detect battery life while in standby; my experience is that it doesn't. It apparently does this wake-up-and-hibernate thing to save battery life in advance, in case I were to leave it in standby for an extended time. There is nothing wrong with my battery; I bought it just a few months ago straight from Dell, it lasts over 2 hours of run time (good for this 4-year-old 17" gaming laptop, haha), and I am plugged in most of the time so all of these times I put the PC in standby from 100% battery.

So if you don't know about this behavior or your computer doesn't do this, can you give me a clue as to exactly what might cause it? Maybe then I can research hidden driver configurations or something.

Answer 1

From chronos's comment on the question:

Have you tried configuring "Standby after" and "Hibernate after" in Control Panel -> Power management? I'm 75% sure the times you set there control the behaviour of your laptop. Other 20% go for the battery charge-based actions (which you can also configure). Remaining 5% cover all other possibilities.

I think the "Standby after" and "Hibernate after" options did it. It seems that Windows goes into standby with an alarm set to wake up at exactly [hibernate after] time, and when it wakes up it automatically hibernates. I don't know the details of the technology though, and since Darth Android completely misinterpreted the behavior in his answer, it might not be something that is supported by every computer or that everyone is aware of. (My laptop was purchased October 2006 though, so I'd expect all recent computers to exhibit this behavior)

By the way, desktops do something similar but a lot cooler, which is called Hybrid sleep; when you activate hybrid sleep, they save RAM to disk like hibernation, but then they enter standby rather than turning off. It's the best of both worlds: turning the PC back on is instant, but if power is lost, then next time the computer is awakened it will restore its RAM from disk.