Sleep mode issue

Amos · Apr 12, 2022

Hi

My monitor/computer (NUC) are inconsistent with their sleeping habits.
I wake up in the morning, and sometimes both the monitor and the computer are awake and sometimes both are asleep (as expected). I set the monitor to sleep after 1hour and the computer to fall asleep after 2hours.

What am I missing here? What is there to check that can explain this phenomena?
Thanks

cereberus · Apr 12, 2022

Amos said:
Hi

My monitor/computer (NUC) are inconsistent with their sleeping habits.
I wake up in the morning, and sometimes both the monitor and the computer are awake and sometimes both are asleep (as expected). I set the monitor to sleep after 1hour and the computer to fall asleep after 2hours.

What am I missing here? What is there to check that can explain this phenomena?
Thanks

It could be something as simple as mouse moving due to vibration, through to automatic updates.

Also, you may have something running in background that prevents pc sleeping in first place.

Amos · Apr 12, 2022

Sometimes I only have edge running when that happens (both sleep/unsleep).
Automatic updates are off and I update it manually.
How can I know/check what is causing it? Thanks

FreeBooter · Apr 12, 2022

A lot of things can keep your computer from going to sleep, like downloading a file, opening a file on the network, or even a disconnected printer with an open job. Windows O/S have an easy method for finding out what the problem is.

Open the Command Prompt by typing cmd.exe into Start Menu, right-click on Cmd.exe, and open it as an administrator.

Within the Command Prompt type:

Code:

Powercfg  -requests

It'll let you know if anything is keeping the computer awake.

Execute below command to identify the event or device that is responsible for the last waking process. Once the results are shown, check the “Instance Path:” to see where it originated from (the USB or PCI port for instance) and look under “Type:” for the nature of the cause, typically a device or a wake timer.

Code:

powercfg   /lastwake

Try3 · Apr 12, 2022

Amos,

I suggest you also post the results of this command to identify your available sleep states.
PowerCfg -a

All the best,
Denis

Amos · Apr 12, 2022

FreeBooter said:
A lot of things can keep your computer from going to sleep, like downloading a file, opening a file on the network, or even a disconnected printer with an open job. Windows O/S have an easy method for finding out what the problem is.

Open the Command Prompt by typing cmd.exe into Start Menu, right-click on Cmd.exe, and open it as an administrator.

Within the Command Prompt type:

Code:

Powercfg -requests

It'll let you know if anything is keeping the computer awake.

Execute below command to identify the event or device that is responsible for the last waking process. Once the results are shown, check the “Instance Path:” to see where it originated from (the USB or PCI port for instance) and look under “Type:” for the nature of the cause, typically a device or a wake timer.

Code:

powercfg /lastwake

Nice! thanks. Now my monitor went to sleep (there wasn't enough time for the computer to fall asleep) so running this command shows None for all requests. I will run it again if again it won't fall asleep, hopefully it will show the problem.

Amos · Apr 12, 2022

Try3 said:
Amos,

I suggest you also post the results of this command to identify your available sleep states.
PowerCfg -a

All the best,
Denis

C:\WINDOWS\system32>PowerCfg -a
The following sleep states are available on this system:
Standby (S3)
Hibernate
Hybrid Sleep
Fast Startup

The following sleep states are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S0 Low Power Idle)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Try3 · Apr 12, 2022

Amos,

OK. You do not have S0 confusing the issue so that potential complication need not be considered.

You can see the transitions to & from sleep [and hibernate] in Event viewer if you want to check that what you think is happening is actually happening whilst you investigate your problem.
Unzip this file then import its files into Event viewer using the control on the right, Import Custom view [you'll be asked to give each view a name and I suggest using the names I gave the files]. You have to import each one singly.
EventViewer.zip - re-attached following reports of problems downloading it
- It is always difficult to know what is significant in Event viewer results but, in general, read the General pane for whatever details it gives when sleep occurs and also when wakeup occurs because that might give further info on the sleep event itself.
- Note also that waking from hibernate is only identified in the Details pane [the tab next to the General pane] by values greater than zero for these entries: HiberWriteDuration, HiberReadDuration, HiberPagesWritten
- I included the Start, shutdowns Custom view as well just out of habit.
- When I find specific entries that seem significant, I also run NirSoft's FullEventLogView because that makes it easy to see everything in chronological order enabling the events before & after the event of interest to be considered.

Denis

Amos · Apr 12, 2022

Try3 said:
Amos,

OK. You do not have S0 confusing the issue so that potential complication need not be considered.

You can see the transitions to & from sleep [and hibernate] in Event viewer if you want to check that what you think is happening is actually happening whilst you investigate your problem.
Unzip this file then import its files into Event viewer using the control on the right, Import Custom view [you'll be asked to give each view a name and I suggest using the names I gave the files]. You have to import each one singly.
EventViewer.zip
- It is always difficult to know what is significant in Event viewer results but, in general, read the General pane for whatever details it gives when sleep occurs and also when wakeup occurs because that might give further info on the sleep event itself.
- Note also that waking from hibernate is only identified in the Details pane [the tab next to the General pane] by values greater than zero for these entries: HiberWriteDuration, HiberReadDuration, HiberPagesWritten
- I included the Start, shutdowns Custom view as well just out of habit.
- When I find specific entries that seem significant, I also run NirSoft's FullEventLogView because that makes it easy to see everything in chronological order enabling the events before & after the event of interest to be considered.

Denis

Thanks for your detailed explanation, just one thing confuses me, you're saying that I can see transitions from/to sleep but the problem is that the monitor never goes to sleep (so the computer for sure isn't), meaning something is stopping it.

Even a small mouse movement (not my case for sure, I myself is asleep at that time) can prevent it from falling asleep and this won't be recorded in the event viewer. I need something that records whatever prevents the sleep mode. for now I have the command from the previous reply.

Try3 · Apr 12, 2022

Sorry if I confused you.
- You said in your first post that it sometimes slept and sometimes did not so I thought being able to see when it did happen might be useful for you.

Perhaps you could disconnect your mouse when you go to bed to eliminate it as a cause of staying awake. Whilst it might not be a 'solution' it might help you move towards one.

Best of luck,
Denis

glasskuter · Apr 12, 2022

Here's a good article that helps find what wakes your computer and things to do to stop it.

How to find out why your PC wakes up, and how to stop it - gHacks Tech News

Find out why your computer is waking up on its own, and how to stop the PC from waking up by adjusting Microsoft Windows settings.

www.ghacks.net

Amos · Apr 12, 2022

My computer fell asleep as expected so I woke it up by pressing the space key. I got the following:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>Powercfg -requests
DISPLAY:
None.

SYSTEM:
None.

AWAYMODE:
None.

EXECUTION:
None.

PERFBOOST:
[DRIVER] Legacy Kernel Caller
Power Manager

ACTIVELOCKSCREEN:
None.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg /lastwake
Wake History Count - 1
Wake History [0]
Wake Source Count - 0

1. what does the following means?
PERFBOOST:
[DRIVER] Legacy Kernel Caller
Power Manager

2. lastwake command seems to show irrelevant information, am I missing something?

Thanks

glasskuter · Apr 12, 2022

Amos said:
My computer fell asleep as expected so I woke it up by pressing the space key

You woke the computer normally. You should run that command after the computer wakes abnormally.

Amos · Apr 12, 2022

glasskuter said:
You woke the computer normally. You should run that command after the computer wakes abnormally.

I see. I don't think the problem is that the computer wakes up abnormally, I think it's never falls asleep to begin with.
I did the above test just to see what is the output in case of a normal awake and then re-check if tomorrow morning I will see that the computer didn't fall asleep. Now I wonder if my strategy is relevant to whatever happens with my computer :)

glasskuter · Apr 12, 2022

Amos said:
I wake up in the morning, and sometimes both the monitor and the computer are awake and sometimes both are asleep (as expected). I set the monitor to sleep after 1hour and the computer to fall asleep after 2hours.

Maybe I'm reading your statement incorrectly. You say sometimes both monitor and computer are asleep as they are supposed to be but at times they are awake, which means something woke them erroneously. It is those times that they computer is not acting as expected that you need to find out what woke it. Is that not what you are trying to accomplish?

Dru2 · Apr 13, 2022

Amos said:
I think it's never falls asleep to begin with.

I had a weird issue where my computer suddenly refused to sleep after doing a GPU driver update. Reverting to the old driver didn't fix.

Long story short, it turns out my Power Plan under Power Options was set to "High Performance". I don't remember setting it to that as I have no reason to use it but setting it back to "Balanced" solved my sleep issue.

Point? Don't take things for granted - I initially checked everything but the power plan, even doing a repair install. Check your power plan, it might surprise you.

Peace

Amos · Apr 13, 2022

glasskuter said:
Maybe I'm reading your statement incorrectly. You say sometimes both monitor and computer are asleep as they are supposed to be but at times they are awake, which means something woke them erroneously. It is those times that they computer is not acting as expected that you need to find out what woke it. Is that not what you are trying to accomplish?

Right, but if the monitor/computer are awake it can be one of the 2 options:
1. They never went to sleep.
2. Something woke them up.

I say it's point 1. You are talking about point 2.
The last 2 mornings were ok, they were asleep so I couldn't check anything. Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Amos · Apr 13, 2022

Dru2 said:
I had a weird issue where my computer suddenly refused to sleep after doing a GPU driver update. Reverting to the old driver didn't fix.

Long story short, it turns out my Power Plan under Power Options was set to "High Performance". I don't remember setting it to that as I have no reason to use it but setting it back to "Balanced" solved my sleep issue.

Point? Don't take things for granted - I initially checked everything but the power plan, even doing a repair install. Check your power plan, it might surprise you.

Peace

In my situation, anything is an option, the question what is the reason for the broken behavior. If they've never went to sleep, I guess it's something to re-define but since it's inconsistent, that's the thing I don't understand. On my computer it's balanced and I did set manually several options to "disable" in order to "disable" them from waking up the computer.

Amos · Apr 13, 2022

So I went out for more than 2 hours and came back. The Monitor and the computer are full awake as if they never went to sleep.
Powercfg -requests shows all none so not sure what went wrong.
So my more accurate question is: how can I know what prevents my monitor/computer from falling asleep and is incosistent?
Thanks!

Dru2 · Apr 13, 2022

Amos said:
So my more accurate question is: how can I know what prevents my monitor/computer from falling asleep and is incosistent?
Thanks!

Sleep issues are kind of hard to figure out, but "usually" updating your GPU drivers (or any old drivers) solves the issue.

With that, look to update any drivers needing to be updated. Also check Device Manager for any red/yellow marks. That indicates a driver issue.

Good luck.