Problems waking from sleep

Hey everyone,
I've encountered a strange problem in the last couple weeks.
hopefully its just a settings thing so that its easily solvable but here it is.

Basically, most (>75%) of the time when I open my laptop from sleep mode i can hear the hard drive doing its thing, so I know the computer is awake, but for some reason no image shows up on the screen. the image will eventually come up, but I have to wait over 1 min usually, sometimes like 2-3 mins.

Furthermore, when the screen does come on the track pad acts erratically. Usually if i wait another minute everything settles down and its good to go, but sometimes i just find its easier to just force a restart with the power button.

any idea??
btw im running leopard, hopefully not everyones suggestions is go to Tiger

dont mean to hijack the whole forum with threads that I created or replied to but removing istat appears to have solved the problem.
I have gone into sleep mode like 4 times since I removed it and so far it wakes up everytime.
this is fantastic!!
I know this is a fairly common problem, so if its happening to you and you have istat installed just remove it and see if it helps.
sorry if everyone knows this already