New ThinkPad P16 Gen 2 Won’t Awaken to Run Programs

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Here’s the scenario on a new Lenovo ThinkPad Type P16 Gen 2:

– I run a drive imaging program twice a day (R-Drive Image but I don’t recommend it) to save my light and fluffy biscuits if Windows ever has issues,

– I run BackupOutlook by Wisco (*that* program I *would* recommend) once a day to preserve my Outlook 2019 doings,

– Although both programs are set to awaken the computer, Windows doesn’t usually run either of them until I touch the keyboard and the computer comes out of ‘Sleep’. This is completely goofy; I’d run both programs on Windows 10 Home or Pro for a very long time. They worked quite well when the computer woke up automatically,

– Lenovo’s “Premier” phone support people have almost no idea how to support Windows. Many of them are complete n00bs. In the several times I’ve called them about this or other needs, they have to consult with other Lenovo people to *guess* at what to do. At the time I purchased the machine, their reputation with their customers clearly showed as *widely* mixed on the reviews for this model of their machine.

Thanks for your attention and thoughtful help!

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Typically how long is the PC asleep before it is scheduled to wake up and run your programs?

I ask this because I have a couple of PC’s that if they have been asleep for more than about 4 hours then when the PC is woken up to run them the system time has “drifted” and is out of sync with the Task Scheduler time. This results in the Task Scheduler thinking it has missed the time to run the Task so it doesn’t. The system then goes back to sleep. When the PC next wakes up then the Task Scheduler sees that it didn’t run the Task. If the option to run it as soon as possible after a scheduled start is missed is selected under Settings then the Program will run.

I ended up creating a Task that woke the PC about 10 minutes prior to the start time of the “real” task. This resync’s the clock and the subsequent task will run as scheduled.

I have had an open ticket with Zotac on this since 2021.

Check the Task Scheduler history and see if this is happening for you too.

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Mr. Austin

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GromitD90 wrote:

Typically how long is the PC asleep before it is scheduled to wake up and run your programs?

I don’t know exactly. But it seems to be 3 or even 4+ hours.

What you wrote makes sense, and it’s not a simple line of thought I’d have imagined. Thank you. Because it could be the easiest thing to try I’ll look into creating a Task that wakes the computer before the programs are meant to run. And if it works, then I’d call my quest completed except for letting you know.

You are the first and only person to respond to my request for help with an intelligent reply in these forums, and on Reddit, and on Bleeping Computer.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Have you tried running “powercfg /sleepstudy” in an elevated command prompt? It will generate a report analyzing your PC sleep for the last three days by default. It will notify you when the report is located or you can specify the report location. See powercfg /? for more information.

--Joe

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Vincenzo, Mr. Austin

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Nope, I ain’t never done that. I didn’t know it existed. I’ll give it a go.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Also see Windows 11 Shows a Black Screen After Sleep: 7 Ways to Fix It (windowsreport.com)

--Joe

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Check you have wake enabled.
In a elevated Command Prompt type: powercfg /waketimers

This will list all registered wakeup things.

cheers, Paul

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Mr. Austin

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Thank you Paul T. When I checked the /waketimers that way I got only 2 entries – which I put there yesterday via Task Scheduler. But these were meant only to launch Notepad.exe, to in turn awaken the computer so it would then run these two programs. They were not created to launch the programs themselves, which already have their own radio boxes with their tasks which are already enabled:

C:\Windows\System32>powercfg waketimers

Timer set by [SERVICE] \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\svchost.exe (SystemEventsBroker) expires at 12:27:30 PM on 3/5/2024.
Reason: Windows will execute ‘NT TASK\Wake up for mid-day R-Drive Image run’ scheduled task that requested waking the computer.

Timer set by [SERVICE] \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\IDriveWindows\id_service.exe (IDriveService) expires at 3:00:00 PM on 3/5/2024.

There are no other waketimers shown in the command line interface. BackupOutlook is not shown there and it’s set to run at 4:55 PM inside its GUI. R-Drive Image is also set to run at 10:30 PM inside its GUI.

So, Paul T, since BackupOutlook’s afternoon run is not shown in the command line interface, and both the afternoon and nighttime runs of R-Drive Image are not shown in the command line interface, where would the computer have stored those tasks to be run? In the Task Scheduler?

Here’s a screen of the current Task Scheduler, in which are seen (a.) the 2 Notepad.exe events I created, (b.) all R-Drive Image run tasks which are a result of enabling that program’s own radio check box, but (c.) BackupOutlook is not shown although it was scheduled inside its GUI.

Here also is BackupOutlook’s screen:

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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I don’t want to preempt your discussion with Paul T but I’m pretty sure that powercfg /waketimers will only list the next task in the user supplied list of tasks and the next task in the system list of tasks.

Just another bit of background on scheduled tasks and waking a PC from sleep.

There are 2 types of wake from sleep – manual and automatic.

Manual events are things like clicking the mouse or pressing the power button. In those cases the PC will wake and will activate the display and will stay awake until there is no further user input for a period of time that you have set in the Power Settings for the device.

An automatic wait is when the PC is woken up to run a scheduled task. In this case the Display is not activated and the PC will stay awake until the scheduled task that woke it has completed plus, I believe, an extra 2 minutes. That 2 minutes is dictated by a hidden power setting called “System unattended sleep timeout” – its default setting is 2 minutes.

In my case the PC was being woken to run a scheduled task but if it had been asleep for longer than about 3 hours things just went crazy. Instead of an Automatic wake it behaved as a manual wake with a wake reason of “ACPI Wake Alarm” even though ACPI was completely disabled in the BIOS.  So the Display was activated and the PC stayed awake. And because the timers were out of sync the scheduled task that was supposed to run never did.

I did get a new BIOS firmware from Zotac that fixed the type of wake to be automatic but to this day the wake reason is still “ACPI Wake Alarm”.

With all that being said, did creating the dummy scheduled task prior to the real task make any difference? Did your mid day R Drive image run work?

Mike

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Mr. Austin

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GromitD90 wrote:

With all that being said, did creating the dummy scheduled task prior to the real task make any difference? Did your mid day R Drive image run work?

Mike your help is very welcome.

Nope, the computer didn’t awaken. I think that because…

(a.) Notepad hadn’t remained open on screen as you’d think it would after Task Scheduler would have launched it. Which seems to mean it was never launched by the Task Scheduler, and,

(b.) As I sat down at the computer, and after unlocking screen, R-Drive Image then started its run at 1:55 PM, long after the 12:30 PM Notepad.exe launch I’d scheduled.

This whole thing’s still a complete head-scratcher for me.

With this post I’m sending screenshots of the individual Task Scheduler tabs, in order, for only the R-Drive Image pointer to Notepad.exe. You can see that I set it for 12:30 PM, but the computer didn’t run R-Drive Image until I gave it keyboard and/or mouse inputs at 1:55 PM as shown in the History tab below.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Yes it certainly looks like your PC is not waking at all from the Task Scheduler.

Make sure you have the advanced power options settings to enable wake timers.

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Mr. Austin

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GromitD90 wrote:

Make sure you have the advanced power options settings to enable wake timers.

Yes, sir. The Wake timers are enabled.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Right-click on the individual Task Manager task, and select Properties.

Click on the Conditions tab.

See if “Wake the computer to run this task” is checked…

 

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*Which* individual Task Manager task?

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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I feel your frustration Mr. Austin. I’m sorry I misunderstood your initial post, I hadn’t realized that your PC wasn’t been woken at all bu a scheduled task.

I’m sure that there is some configuration setting that is causing this. I would suggest 2 more things to try:

1. Disable Hibernation.
2. Disable Fast Startup

If you still have the problem I would start and play around with any BIOS settings related to sleep and hibernate.

Mike

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Mr. Austin

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Thanks Mike. I’m pretty sure I fiddled with those in October with Lenovo’s guesses. But when I can make time I’ll look at them again.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Mr. Austin wrote:

*Which* individual Task Manager task?

Whichever task is not waking the computer to run…

 

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Wake also needs to be enabled in the BIOS sometimes.

Mr. Austin wrote:

where would the computer have stored those tasks to be run?

Programs can have their own schedulers if they have a background task – common in backup apps. It looks like your apps have their own and expect the machine to be running for the schedule to work – hence the late run after you fired up the machine.

I would work on the wake up via Task Scheduler to get the machine to wake, then sort out the backup.
Set a wake timer for 5 minutes time, then shut down and see what happens.

cheers, Paul

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Mr. Austin

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Here is a transcript of Microsoft’s first (chat) attempt at support. This is for the several people who have posted about this offering their help. The tech knew less than I did. I was underwhelmed. I was courteous:

Combined-case-gnotes

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Have you tried Paul T’s suggestion. Create a task that is scheduled to wake the PC in 5 minutes. Put the PC to sleep and see if it wakes up at the scheduled time.

just first of all trying to determine if the scheduled wake works at all.

If it does wake try again with a different time lapse – maybe an hour. Then by subsequent tests try and determine where the length of time the PC has been asleep exceeds the ability to wake up.

That won’t fix your problem but will give you a chance to devise a workaround.

Mike

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Thanks Mike. I’ll make the time to try it again by attempting to launch a different program than Notepad.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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This thread may help you. I can’t say I fully understand it, and it is quite long, but it seems like it may be related to your problem, based on this post:

(In a nutshell, it says there are different phases of the modern sleep mode, with different characteristics)
If you let Power options [or some other utility] turn off the display then you can stay in an early phase of <i>S0 Modern standby</i> if you do not set any Power options, Sleep after … . The beauty of this is that you can use Task scheduler to perform timed tasks [which you cannot do if you let it enter that later phase called “sleep”].

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/pc-with-modern-standby-wakes-upon-mouse-kb-trigger.17565/

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Mr. Austin

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Thank much. I had a fast read of the description that post mentions and it feels like it could one right track. I’ll come back to it when I can make time.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Update: Lenovo is replacing the Thunderbolt dock for this machine because its two external displays have been going to standby without warning. I’ll see if this makes a difference.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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