Uh oh - a Catch 22

Becuase I wanted to neaten up my desk I bought a BlueTooth wireless keyboard and a BlueTooth wireless trackball. I've been able to get these 2 working just fine, and my desk is a bit neater without the extra wires. But.....

When I put my PC to sleep there is no way to wake it up. Apparently when it sleeps it turns off the BlueTooth radio. So I have to reboot using the PC's hardware Power on/off button. This seems to do a reboot; I can't tell if this happens after a power off, or if it just reboots the PC like the hardware reset button does.

After the system is asleep the PC's Reset/Reboot button does not work either, presumably for the same reason the PC isn't able to get an interrupt from wither the keyboard or the trackball.

Is there any way to wake the PC from sleep in this situation?

Thanks FreeBooter - the Power Management option for the trackball is already enabled - and it does not wake my PC.

I did it a bit differently on the workbench I use in fixing computers. I kept the Wired keyboard as it doesn't have to move around but used a 2-port USB Hub then plugged the keyboard into it along with the USB Dongle for a Wireless mouse. It works for me as I never know in advance if a computer has Bluetooth. I do use Bluetooth mice on all my Notebooks.

Forgot the link

I just don't use sleep and turn it off

Hazel123 said:

I just don't use sleep and turn it off

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Your PC is an insomniac also? So is mine. “Make noise or get out!” I tell it.

Hazel123 said:

I just don't use sleep and turn it off

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How is this helpful.

FreeBooter said:

How is this helpful.

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Well, kind of obviously if it doesn’t sleep it doesn’t need to be woken up? Screen savers shouldn’t cause this issue and it really is a suggestion hidden in a statement.

Op

antspants said:

Well, kind of obviously if it doesn’t sleep it doesn’t need to be woken up? Screen savers shouldn’t cause this issue and it really is a suggestion hidden in a statement.

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OP prefer to use sleep state, so we should help with waking the PC instead of saying don't use it.

There’s room for everyone in here, but sure

Thanks (again) for that post from superuser.com. It looks promising. I'll try it later tonight and see what happens.

I did find out that using the hardware power button when the pc is asleep just wakes it up rather than doing a complete reboot. So if nothing else works I guess I can recondition my brain to do that.

Birk said:

I did find out that using the hardware power button when the pc is asleep just wakes it up rather than doing a complete reboot. So if nothing else works I guess I can recondition my brain to do that.

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That’s pretty common. Holding it down for about 3 seconds should shut the PC down. So just a quick press to wake. Still, you shouldn’t have to.

The way I understand it, depending on the Uefi bios, there can be limitations of using BT devices, both in Windows and the UEFI bios.

Generally, the Bluetooth device will be disconnected when the system enters sleep or hibernate mode, so cannot wake up the computer.
If your system supports Modern Standby, the Bluetooth devices are still connected after the system enters sleep mode. But if it enters hibernate mode,the connection will be disabled.

Most importantly, the user needs to be aware there is no bios support for paired BT devices. You can work in bios with these devices only if it uses a dongle.

My advice to the OP, if you choose to use paired BT devices in Windows, DO NOT get rid of your wired or usb wireless ones. If you ever need to work in the bios, you will need them.

Well, it almost worked - I think. Here's a list of my commands:

C:\Users\Birk>powercfg /devicequery wake_programmable
HID-compliant consumer control device (001)
HID Keyboard Device (001)
HID-compliant vendor-defined device (004)
Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (17) I219-V
HID-compliant consumer control device (004)
HID-compliant consumer control device (005)
Kensington Expert Wireless Trackball (BLE)
HID-compliant system controller (002)
C:\Users\Birk>powercfg /deviceenablewake "HID Keyboard Device (001)"
C:\Users\Birk>powercfg /deviceenablewake "Kensington Expert Wireless Trackball (BLE)"

All that looked good. So I put the PC to sleep and tried both the trackball and the keyboard. Didn't work.

So I tried both again. No help. So I used the power button to wake the PC, and it came back as expected.

Except neither the trackball or the keyboard worked. So I tried to get them to work by powering them off and on. No joy. Tried to power off and on the keyboard again. Nothing. But then I notice I had a mouse cursor on the screen, so I opened Settings/System/Bluetooth and saw the trackball was enabled but the keyboard was not. So I re-paired the keyboard and it's what's typing this text.

Maybe I was just too impatient and need to give the system more time to make the BlueTooth connections. Ill do a bit more experimenting tomorrow. But at least I know the power button is a reliable waker upper.

Birk said:

Becuase I wanted to neaten up my desk I bought a BlueTooth wireless keyboard and a BlueTooth wireless trackball. I've been able to get these 2 working just fine, and my desk is a bit neater without the extra wires. But.....

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What mouse and keyboard did you get?

I have both a Logitech Mouse and Keyboard, which are both BT capable, but I use the also supplied Unifying USB dongle to connect the mouse and keyboard instead of using BT, as this allows both keyboard and mouse to work in BIOS and awaken Windows without issue.


Yes, BT deactivates when the PC sleeps, and why you should not use BT, if you want to use your KB & mouse to wake Windows and work in the BIOS. Additionally, you might try entering the BIOS and insuring "Legacy USB" is enabled.

This doesn't exactly fix your problem the way you want but, I have a W10 desktop that I use with my radios. I also have a wireless mouse and keyboard. The keyboard and mouse both have an on/off switch. So I just turn them off and leave the desktop and monitor running. I could turn off the monitor also, but I leave that running with the desktop. After a lack of activity for about 15 minutes, the screen blanks out and shuts down to stand-by. When I am ready to go again, I just turn on the keyboard and mouse, and hit a key on the keyboard, or click on the mouse. Everything starts up where I left off.

The only time I have to log in is when it gets hit with an update.

On my W11 laptop, I use wireless mouse. On that system, I just close the lid and the system goes into "hibernate". That saves everything to disk and then shuts down. When I am ready to go again, I just open the lid and hit the power button. In about 15 seconds, everything is restored where I left off. I also turn off the mouse but that is just to save on the battery. I only need to log in periodically when I install a windows update.

FreeBooter said:

Op

OP prefer to use sleep state, so we should help with waking the PC instead of saying don't use it.

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Crack on then, you're as free to solve this as anyone else.

I don't think it would hurt the OP to realize that Windows has never perfected Sleep and Hibernate for the thousands of devices out there, regardless of the peripherals.

Have you tried changing this setting? I can't do a test because I don't have a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse.