I wonder if my Laptop's faulty ? Troubleshooting Vista's sleep and hibernate.

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I've been pretty pleased with this Dell of mine. But a few days ago it began  refusing to go into Sleep mode.

Since I use sleep quite a lot this was, frankly, a darn nuisance. Saving and Reloading 4GB of RAM is actually slower than booting the OS, so I'm not the fan of hibernation I once was. If you look at Vista's scheduled tasks, you'll notice it does a bunch things on boot which means it can be a bit sluggish if you go that route. I tried unplugging every bit of hardware I could. No difference. I hadn't installed any new software between sleep working and the machines new found insomnia. I was thinking I'd double check my data backups and then re-install (bad troubleshooting) when, yesterday, Sleep started to work again.

This morning I got my laptop out and when to start it up. Nothing. Totally flat battery. Ggrrrrrr.  With the power plugged in it  booted with Vista's "I wasn't shut down cleanly" screen.

This is on of those times to have a look in the event viewer.  What had happened between 18:15 last night and 09:00 this morning ? Application log. Nothing. Security log SMS logged on at 20:38. Eh ? I've got an alibi ! I was in a restaurant having dinner with some of our community leaders - the computer was in my car. Application log. 20:38. Network start up messages (and finding no cable connected). Group Policy couldn't contact a server, DNS, DHCP, Time Service all failed to connect. Then this

 Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Power-Troubleshooter
Date:          29/06/2007 20:38:21
Level:         Information

The system has resumed from sleep. 
Sleep Time: 29/06/2007 18:13:25
Wake Time: 29/06/2007 20:38:02 
Wake Source: Device -ACPI Lid

OK. The system woke at 20:38 but what's this "Device - ACPI lid" . That says the lid was opened - I could accept this if the car was bouncing around but it had been parked for nearly 2 hours and it was going to be parked for another hour and a half. The last event is logged at 22:11

 Log Name:      System
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
Date:          29/06/2007 22:11:21
Level:         Information

 The system is entering sleep.

By 22:11 I driving home. Was there something as the computer sat in the boot (trunk) which stopped it hibernating. Could a faulty lid switch be to blame ?  I can foresee a lot of trouble trying to find out. At least Vista's event viewer is a real improvement on what we've had up till now and makes that side of it fairly easy.