I’m trying to start getting in the habit of putting the computer in sleep when I go to bed and work, but I keep coming back to it and it’s back awake. I tried looking at the event viewer in control panel, but I can’t make much out of it. This is literally the first time in my life I’ve read anything out of there, so I don’t really have much of an idea what I’m looking for. I see a couple different things that might be related, but they are at drastically different times. Not in front of me right now, so this is from memory. One said simply something like “resume from sleep” and I think this is the one that was only a few minutes after entering sleep for the two instances I checked. Then the log was pretty much blank for hours until another “power” type entry that I don’t remember the phrasing of right now, other than it seemed to also be implying resume from sleep (I think it actually said something like leaving low power state) and included “source: power button”. Which is odd thing to happen while I’m either asleep or not there.
In bios, or is there another way to do that in windows? I’ll try it but hopefully it’s not that, as I would like to be able to use that feature for minor convenience sake.
Make sure your Wake on Lan settings(in windows) require Wake on Magic Packet, and set up your wake events to use the Magic Packet setup. Otherwise, Windows post-7(and possibly later updates of 7) will aggressively wake every computer on the network that it can with general network traffic, unless those machines are specifically looking for the magic packet.
Both in Windows and in BIOS.
The Intel driver is stupid and even though I’ve set the Magic Packet only option it still woke up the PC randomly.
First confirm that disabling WOL solves your sleep issues. Then you can think about alternate ways to use WOL in the future. I did use a Realtek NIC instead. Works like it should now.
I guess I’ve got some googling to do later. I’ve seen the wake on lan settings in bios, not in windows (never had to look for it before) and “magic packet” sounds foreign (and silly) to me.
Go to the network options and find the button for driver/device settings. In the driver window you will find the options on the bottom of the list. Like Wake on LAN enabled/disabled and wake only on Magic Packet enabled/disabled. Just toggle those options.
Your sleep issues could also be caused by something completely different, like bad behaving mouse or keyboard. That’s why you need to check them one by one. WOL is just my hunch.
Thanks. Gonna still try to read up on the magic packet thing though, so maybe I can use it to still be able to remote wake from my laptop in bed but still be able to keep it asleep otherwise.
There is one thing I came across recently - powercfg. It can configure and generate reports. I think its /lastwake that gives an explanation what was the reason
I have the same problem. Except it only comes back up once. The next sleep is then a locked one. I still think it’s the Synapse /Razer mouse software. But not sure.
Also, some apps won’t let it go in sleep. In my case it seems YouTube (chrome) and some softwares. Can’t really pinpoint it either.
I’d only ever run across it in the bios, that setting I believe physically disables/enables the ethernet port from receiving traffic at all while off/asleep.
Mine has stayed asleep the full night/day twice now. I think what might have been causing it was the fact I had a shared folder from the desktop open on my laptop even though I wasn’t actually using it. Maybe windows refreshes the folder view from time to time even if you don’t have any files opened from it. I didn’t have any shares open these last two times it stayed asleep. I also have razer’s mouse software so that’s a possibility too. I was hoping there would be a more definitive log somewhere that said exactly why and “power button” can’t possibly be it. o.0
windows sucks and refuses to sleep correctly for some people. i suspect this goes as deep as certain hardware things like a motherboard or smth.
ive had this problem on several of my machines for almost a decade.
windows just doesnt let you tell it to only wake from sleep via certain routes. its very sensitive to many things.
ive tried hooking everything up via a USB dock with buttons for every device, and disabling everything when i put the pc to sleep. ive tried unplugging everything from the box including ethernet, and disabling wireless. nothing matters.
you can check the event viewer, but that doesnt know about everything that can wake the pc.
you can disable wake on lan, but that might not be the cause.
you can disable each device individually, either by telling windows that the device cannot wake the pc, or via hardware switches or unplugging it.
you can airgap the entire machine and it might not even work, because windows itself has some internal clock that wants to wake the pc at some point and theres nothing you can do about it. maybe a windows update wants to install, so it turned the machine on. maybe a windows update was installed, and it cant sleep correctly until its restarted. maybe your mouse is waking it up via small movements that trigger it.
ive had it happen to one machine, and then suddenly it fixes itself one day.
ive had it happen for a few weeks at a time, and then fix itself, and then come back a few months later and refuse to sleep correctly until it was restarted.
ive had it happen to another machine, that remains a problem even after a cpu swap, os reinstall, and complete hardware rejiggering, and then work fine for months.
and ive had another machine with basically the same hardware that has slept correctly every night for the past 7+ years.
“go fuck yourself.” is the vibe i get. windows is spaghetti and you should be glad it turns on at all.
noone knows how it works, what causes it, or how to fix it. there are many things you can try, but none of them will tell you for sure what is the cause.
i imagine diagnosing cancer is easier than fixing windows’ sleep problems.
/salt rant over
i wish you the best of luck, but sometimes its just haunted.
For me, it was both of my Windows PCs w/ Intel NICs. Wake on Pattern Match just started constantly waking both of em after a Windows update like 6-9 months ago.
In searching back for another thread I started, I came across this one again which I forgot about.
The problem does in fact seem to have been having the shared folder open, as it never did it again after that.
However, I since changed the motherboard and CPU, and now it always turns itself back on within seconds of being put to sleep. I hate you windows. Yeah, yeah, switch to linux. I really don’t have the patience or give a shit to do that.
Sounds like something is waking your PC automatically. I’d check powercfg /lastwake in Command Prompt , it usually tells you what triggered the wake. Also worth looking in Device Manager and disabling “allow this device to wake the computer” on things like network adapters or your mouse/keyboard. That fixed it for me in the past.
