Solved Windows Power Plan Seems to Change from Balanced to Power Saver by Itself

On the system listed as my primary here (11th Gen i7 Based PC), I have found that the system has seemingly changed from the Balanced power plan to the Power Saver plan without my doing anything at all (at least that I am aware of).

My system is set to wake automatically at 7:55 AM every day. Macrium reflect then performs the daily backup at 8:00 AM. Once turned on, the system will stay on because my settings in the balanced power plan are for no sleep or hibernation, ever.

However, over the past month or so I have discovered that the system was in a sleeping state roughly 4 times now. Every time, the reason is the same: The power plan has changed.

Has anyone else seen this behavior or are you aware of any software or settings that can cause this to happen? For the life of me I simply cannot determine a cause.

HI,

To identify the application that changes the power plan, open the Windows Events Viewer and filter on event ID 12.
In the example bellow a event was generated after I changed my power plan from the control pannel (Process = Explorer.exe)

And you can see the GUIDs for your power plans by running the command
powercfg /L

Do please note that that EventID 12 is also generated by other causes so checking your power plan GUIDs against those shown in the Event viewer records [as illustrated by zinou] is essential if you are to interpret the events.
Log - System
Source - UserModePowerService
EventID - 12


Just by way of example, I alter some selected power properties using a PowerCFg script and that is recorded as an EventID 12.
In my case, the results are shown as
Process C:\Windows\System32\powercfg.exe (process ID:3388) reset policy scheme from {381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e} to {381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e}
meaning that PowerCfg was used to alter a power property and that
- the active power plan beforehand was GUID
{381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e}
- the active power plan afterwards was GUID
{381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e}
i.e. Balanced power plan before, Balanced power plan afterwards.


It seems to me that the first thing you need to check is whether
- your computer has switched between different power plans
or
- Your computer has changed some properties within the same power plan.
The latter was fairly common in the Windows 7 period. I have not seen it reported for quite some time.


The identity of the process causing the change is also significant.
- ziou's example shows explorer.exe causing the change.
- My example shows PowerCfg.exe causing the change.



Al the best,
Denis

zinou said:

To identify the application that changes the power plan, open the Windows Events Viewer and filter on event ID 12

Click to expand...

Freakin' genius. That allowed me to identify the trouble-maker: It was ASUS AI Suite. Makes perfect sense because I had played with it recently.

Denis, thanks for your suggestions as well. I at least already know that it had changed the power plan. That was not speculation on my part. I said that this is what happened because it was blatantly obvious - the plan was actually set to Power Saver which I NEVER choose on my own. But the info you provided was very helpful, thank you!

hsehestedt said:

Freakin' genius. That allowed me to identify the trouble-maker: It was ASUS AI Suite. Makes perfect sense because I had played with it recently.

Denis, thanks for your suggestions as well. I at least already know that it had changed the power plan. That was not speculation on my part. I said that this is what happened because it was blatantly obvious - the plan was actually set to Power Saver which I NEVER choose on my own. But the info you provided was very helpful, thank you!

Click to expand...

The exact same thing happened to me when I used AI Suite (I don't use it anymore). Unfortunately, AI Suite changes your power plan based on your fan profile. If Denis hadn't explained it first, I would have suggested checking that first.