Sleep mode has gone AWOL

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Dell Inspiron 519 desktop running Win7 HP x64,  At some point in the last day or so, the “sleep” function from the “shut down” button on the Start menu has ceased to work properly.  i read a strategy on the MS site :

which led me to the following Computer Management screen:
Using the procedure in the MS guide, I looked at the properties of each item in the USB list, and none of them has “allow this device to wake computer” enabled.

Unknown whether this glitch is related to my recent addition of a second OS (Mint) on a second HDD but cannot determine what if anything I did to corrupt the sleep function, which we use every day.  I’m assuming this is within the purview of the BIOS.  Could use some wisdom on this…

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woody

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See if Windows 7 does not go to sleep is of any help.

Also, see Guided Help: Get a detailed Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report for your computer in Windows 7 to help diagnose the issue.

--Joe

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woody, Slowpoke47

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The “sleep” or “hibernate” functions that run by default in Windows 7 can prove to be problematic. I advise my clients to restrict hibernate/sleep functions for usage only in absolutely needed circumstances. It is commonly problematic and seldom ever fixed. Myriads of causes you can spend weeks trying to find. Just not worth it.

FIRST: If you are running a desktop PC, shut down all sleep and hibernate functions. They are of no value and will cause you problems eventually. But, for some notebook PCs, where the computer is used in a truly mobile sense, where house power is not always available, you need these functions to extend battery life.

Background: The concept of sleep/hibernate was designed to extend battery life. If you are not running on a battery or never do, the very idea is quite useless. If you are doing it because your computer takes a long time to startup, fix that problem. Under normal circumstances if you are finished using the computer and do not plan to use it again for at least several hours, shut it down. Leaving it running continuously is a sure way to shorten your computer’s life

You can change how these functions behave here:

Start globe
Type Power options in the text box that pops up
Desktop computers:
Set all hibernate/sleep functions to NEVER
Notebook computers:
Again, set all hibernate/sleep functions to NEVER, EXCEPT when it is battery powered.
In the Power Options window, Click Change Power Settings
Change Advanced Power Settings
Set hard disk to turn off after 20 minutes of non-use
Under Sleep, several settings:
Sleep After NEVER
Hybrid after: Never

CT

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GoneToPlaid, woody, Slowpoke47

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Hello, Slowpoke said “At some point in the last day or so, the “sleep” function from the “shut down” button on the Start menu has ceased to work properly.”

Slowpoke why don’t you try run system restore and restore to a few days ago if you can? If you could restore to the day before this happened…

Canadian Tech, I admire your posts and basically agree with you. I will not argue. You have business use clients. However, I have been using sleep, not hibernate, but sleep (maybe called standby) on all my computers for years. Especially if they are laptops, but I do feel that putting a computer, even a desktop, in sleep mode is not a bad thing if done after several hours. One fear I have is if someone accidentally leaves the computer running (basically home use), then the computer will go to sleep after several hours and the person does not have to panic, that they forgot to turn off the computer. I also let the computer sit purposely for several hours (2) to allow Idle Tasks to run then the computer will go to sleep and wait for me until the next morning.

To each their own on the settings they make. But, I do agree that some of the settings on desktops is way too frequent for “power savings” and it gets old having the computer sleeping when you need to use it. Good ideas CT.

(CT can you give an update to how long you have not gotten updates and your results?)

Thank you.

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Slowpoke47

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None of my clients are enterprise.

123 Windows 7 clients have not had a Microsoft update of any kind since May 2017. That is 3,557 computer months of operation. Not one. Not a single incident. In fact, my support work load has fallen off dramatically — probably 90%. These machines just run well day in day out completely reliably.

Very clear to me that There is a lot of unjustified paranoia around windows updating.

Note also:
1. Switch to the Chrome browser
2. Install the free VLC media player
3. Stop using Internet Explorer
4. Uninstall Adobe Flash Player
5. Uninstall Adobe Reader
6. Uninstall Java
7. Install a top-rated antivirus (AV) product (I do not recommend “security” products). We use Bitdefender Antivirus + universally.
8. Do backups regularly

CT

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Chessie

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joep517 wrote:

See if Windows 7 does not go to sleep is of any help.

Also, see Guided Help: Get a detailed Power Efficiency Diagnostics Report for your computer in Windows 7 to help diagnose the issue.

Thanks for posting.  Your first link already brought me to the screens I posted.  I’ll see if your second link uncovers any clues and post back.

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Canadian Tech wrote:

If you are doing it because your computer takes a long time to startup, fix that problem. Under normal circumstances if you are finished using the computer and do not plan to use it again for at least several hours, shut it down. Leaving it running continuously is a sure way to shorten your computer’s life

No battery is involved, as this is a desktop machine.  During its 10-year (so far) life, there has never been a problem with the sleep function, although I am aware that others have had such.

Yes, this computer takes several minutes to get fully booted up, have tried to get a handle on that to no avail more than once.  Malware etc. scans come back clean, and we have used Emsisoft for years.  Could be too many items in “services” that start during bootup, don’t know.

Our usage is typically sporadic throughout a given day, and it seems wrong to let the disks run for hours when there is nothing going on.  Maybe a coincidence, but I am just finishing setting up a dual boot arrangement (on separate HDD’s) with Linux Mint- some glitch could have come into play relative to that, since the BIOS is, of course, common to both OS’s.

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anonymous wrote:

Slowpoke why don’t you try run system restore and restore to a few days ago if you can? If you could restore to the day before this happened…

A possibility, but a pile of data would go under the bus- especially since I can’t pinpoint the loss of this function.

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Hello slowpoke. You said, “A possibility, but a pile of data would go under the bus- especially since I can’t pinpoint the loss of this function.”

Slowpoke are you saying that in the last day or two so much has changed with the computer that you can’t roll back the registry?? If the answer is yes, then you must of had a bunch of updates, installs or something and one of those things broke your sleep mode.

Restoring the registry will not make you loose data you have stored in my documents or elsewhere that you placed them (as in another folder or drive). It will however undo any changes or installs that you may had done in the last day or two. (this may be good).

It -may- be needed to restore, then slowly, one by one re-instate all that you had done lately constantly checking afterwards to see if sleep mode is broken.

Keep us posted slowpoke.

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roll back the registry??……Restoring the registry

Are you by any chance talking about using System Restore?

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Hello PKC, thank you joining in.

Yes, when I say “restore the registry”, it is to mean the same as “doing a System Restore to an earlier time”. (That was said in post #1963274).

Thank you for clarifying/confirming.

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Please see this Power Options pop-up:

What do I need to know about the items “allow wake timers” and “USB selective suspend setting”?

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Note that this PC is running two HDD’s, one with W7 and one with Linux Mint, recently installed.  The Mint OS has an analogous function to “sleep” called “suspend.”  Just tested the Mint OS and “suspend” works as expected- btw, it’s instant.  This would seem to indicate that my “sleep” issue is a W7 problem and not a BIOS issue.

In perusing Mint, I find that most, if not all, operations are more or less instant, compared to our W7 experience- W7 typically “thinks” about it a little before acting.

Canadian Tech wrote:

Background: The concept of sleep/hibernate was designed to extend battery life. If you are not running on a battery or never do, the very idea is quite useless. If you are doing it because your computer takes a long time to startup, fix that problem. Under normal circumstances if you are finished using the computer and do not plan to use it again for at least several hours, shut it down. Leaving it running continuously is a sure way to shorten your computer’s life

As stated, we have never had an issue with “sleep” until now.  I know the computer should not be left running unnecessarily.  I have timed the boot function, perhaps others will tell me how their bootup compares to ours.  I’ll start a new thread for that topic.

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I have an HP desktop, one year old, running Win 10 Home 64 bit Version 1809.

I first noticed about mid-September 2019 that the computer did not go into Sleep mode after being idle for 20 minutes as previously was the case. The display “shut off” after 10 minutes as expected. These times are those I entered into the Windows Settings “System” Menu.

Apparently the “automatically go into Sleep function” is not working as it should and has not been doing so for quite some time.

= Ax Kramer

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woody

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I can report that as of September 28th, sleep mode is working again. The computer “obeys” the Power and Sleep Menu setting of 20 minutes. Who fixed this and how I do not know.

= Ax Kramer

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Just tried resetting the “sleep” mode on a timed schedule via Power.  Display goes dark ok but the computer will not enter sleep mode using this method.  We already knew it didn’t enter sleep using the Start menu.

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I gave up on trying to use sleep mode on my Win7 desktop computer. Three times out of four, it works when going to sleep and coming out of sleep mode. On the times that it doesn’t work, the computer either does not properly enter sleep mode, or the computer has a BSOD when trying to come out of sleep mode. It seems that MS broke sleep mode way back in early 2018 when they introduced the Meltdown and Spectre patches and when they implemented repotline.

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Slowpoke47

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GoneToPlaid wrote:

It seems that MS broke sleep mode way back in early 2018 when they introduced the Meltdown and Spectre patches and when they implemented repotline.

Remind me to send them a thank you note.  It’s just one “favor” after another.  This is just another incentive to continue our emigration to Mint.  Others have posted to my (plaintive) threads that various problems are due to our “Stone-Age” hardware- but the sleep equivalent on Mint works fine, and Mint is all-around more accommodating.

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OP here- Update- Been experimenting with advanced settings at Control Panel>Power and succeeded in getting system to enter timed sleep mode automatically- not really what I was looking for, but better than shutting down and booting up multiple times each day.  Display set to go dark after 10 minutes w/o input and system set to go into sleep after 15 minutes.  So far, wakes on command.

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OP again- to my surprise, the Sleep function from the Start menu is now working.  Perhaps some of the poking around mentioned in my previous post made this happen?  Anyway, I’ll just let sleeping dogs (computers?) lie…

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If anyone else has a similar “Sleep” issue, I can post a screenshot of the Power settings that apparently solved the problem.

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@ Slowpoke47

Slowpoke47 wrote:

Been experimenting with advanced settings at Control Panel>Power and succeeded in getting system to enter timed sleep mode automatically- not really what I was looking for, but better than shutting down and booting up multiple times each day. Display set to go dark after 10 minutes w/o input and system set to go into sleep after 15 minutes.

Slowpoke47 wrote:

If anyone else has a similar “Sleep” issue, I can post a screenshot of the Power settings that apparently solved the problem.

Yes, please.

I had a problem with the *sleep mode–mine was an issue after my system went to sleep–it would not come out of the sleep mode

So, sure–show us what you finally got.

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I selected Start>Control Panel>System and Security>Power Options.  The plan I chose is High Performance.  Here I selected the time intervals shown.  These are for automatic sleep mode.

From here I selected change advanced power settings.  The pop-up that results from this does not allow size adjustment, so the rest of the screenshots here are taken scrolling through the menu choices with all items expanded.  No idea which if any of these had any impact, but I went down the menu using guesswork and intuition- just the strategy for this kind of thing!

There are two more pictures, see following post.

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Here are the other two screenshots.

Taken together they show the entire tree with the settings I’m currently using.  Note the “Apply” and “OK” buttons at the bottom.

Our Sleep function now works as expected on automatic mode as well as via the Start menu.

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One thing I’ve been having problems with is the USB Selective Suspend.

That thing just doesn’t work consistently between different hardware – or even different firmware versions of the same hardware, and then there were driver patches for it recently on some of those and it just might have been touched by recent Windows updates too.

It’s now my usual suspect when suspend or resume doesn’t work right.

(If it was enabled, on some hardware you’d need to connect a PS/2 keyboard to wake up… power and reset buttons would just cause a power cycle and lose state. On other hardware, it would autowake from suspend within a minute if it was disabled…)

BTW, many laptops need suspend/sleep if they have a docking station. True hotplug was apparently too hard to do right – dock or undock while fully running can cause problems. And it’s on smallish print in the hardware model specific user manual, which the users never read anyway…

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F A Kramer wrote:

I can report that as of September 28th, sleep mode is working again. The computer “obeys” the Power and Sleep Menu setting of 20 minutes. Who fixed this and how I do not know.

= Ax Kramer

That’s what happened here also.  Does W10 have a “sleep” option similar to W7, from the start menu?

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OP Update- System goes into sleep mode via the timer in Control Panel> Power as expected.  But I’ve been keeping an eye on the computer, and noticed that the system periodically exits and then re-enters sleep mode with no user input of any kind.  During the exited period, the screen stays dark but the cursor appears, and the blue power light on the case stops blinking, as when in sleep, and glows steadily.  And, during these times, I don’t hear the HDD’s start, as when user input cancels the sleep function.  However, if I touch the mouse, the screen lights up- seems to indicate that the HDD’s never stopped.

By comparison, if I exit sleep mode in the usual way (pressing any key) the sound of the disks spinning up is easy to hear.

Thread status returned to “not resolved.”

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Computer Management, Device Manager, find the entry for the mouse and uncheck this box:

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Slowpoke47

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This could be caused by Prefetch and Superfetch settings, which will cause Windows to load programs which Windows “thinks” that you will use around certain times of the day, or which Windows “thinks” that you will run either immediately or very soon after booting your computer.

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satrow wrote:

Computer Management, Device Manager, find the entry for the mouse and uncheck this box:

Thanks for posting.  Just looked at this, box was not checked.

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Slowpoke47 wrote:

Thanks for posting. Just looked at this, box was not checked.

In that case, you might find something in the system BIOS / firmware settings – it can trigger a wakeup independent of operating system settings.

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Slowpoke47, satrow

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mn– wrote:

In that case, you might find something in the system BIOS / firmware settings – it can trigger a wakeup independent of operating system settings.

Could you please give a little detail on checking this?  Much appreciated!

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Slowpoke47 wrote:

Could you please give a little detail on checking this?

Well… I believe Dell has the key to go into BIOS setup at F2 ?

So, shut down the system completely, then turn it on and jump on the setup hotkey at the appropriate time (or repeatedly until successful) to get to those settings.

Things in there typically include such as, what devices it’ll try to boot from and in which order, what devices are enabled and what disabled, disk interface mode … and to some extent, power management behavior (usually in some “Advanced” section).

Specific contents may vary between production batch, BIOS version number or connected peripherals, even on same model. You might find a setting that affects wakeup… or might not. Never seen that specific Dell model myself.

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Slowpoke47

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[Slowpoke47]

mn– wrote:

Slowpoke47 wrote:

Could you please give a little detail on checking this?

Well… I believe Dell has the key to go into BIOS setup at F2 ?

So, shut down the system completely, then turn it on and jump on the setup hotkey at the appropriate time (or repeatedly until successful) to get to those settings.

Things in there typically include such as, what devices it’ll try to boot from and in which order, what devices are enabled and what disabled, disk interface mode … and to some extent, power management behavior (usually in some “Advanced” section).

Specific contents may vary between production batch, BIOS version number or connected peripherals, even on same model. You might find a setting that affects wakeup… or might not. Never seen that specific Dell model myself.

Thanks, I’ll try that.  What are the chances that the recent addition of Linux could be affecting this?  While the new OS is on a separate disk, Linux co-opts the boot sequence.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Slowpoke47.

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Slowpoke47 wrote:

What are the chances that the recent addition of Linux could be affecting this?

Unlikely in the normal case but not completely impossible.

Does it behave differently if you’ve cold-booted into Windows, than if you only warm-restarted after running Linux? Because it’s sort of conceivable that it might be controlled by driver-loaded firmware and doesn’t reset properly on a warm restart.

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Slowpoke47

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… oh yes, the bootloader shouldn’t count… is this in UEFI or “legacy” boot mode?

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Slowpoke47

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mn– wrote:

Does it behave differently if you’ve cold-booted into Windows, than if you only warm-restarted after running Linux? Because it’s sort of conceivable that it might be controlled by driver-loaded firmware and doesn’t reset properly on a warm restart.

We’re not doing much with the Linux yet- still moving in and getting acquainted.  But with the two OS’s, Linux takes control of the boot process, and shows a Grub screen on start or restart with a choice of which OS to run.

mn– wrote:

is this in UEFI or “legacy” boot mode?

I don’t know the answer or where to find out, sorry.

I’ll try the F2 sequence you mentioned, tomorrow morning.

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mn– wrote:

So, shut down the system completely, then turn it on and jump on the setup hotkey at the appropriate time (or repeatedly until successful) to get to those settings.

Here are some pix from the BIOS Setup:

Two more, next post

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Two more pix- The only two changes I made were, in the Boot Settings Config, changed NumLock Key value to “off” and in Power Management changed the Remote Wake Up value to “Disabled.”  No idea what those changes may or may not do.

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Slowpoke47 wrote:

and in Power Management changed the Remote Wake Up value to “Disabled.” No idea what those changes may or may not do.

Well, the Remote Wake Up could well be relevant. Or it could affect only the network interface.

(Some other models have had specific settings for USB and other peripherals here.)

If you have a S2 mode for the ACPI Suspend, that might accidentally change things regarding resume but strictly speaking shouldn’t.

And that’s about it…

Oh and the UEFI mode… right, not likely in a desktop model with AMD processor and CMOS Setup copyright date in 2005. EFI and UEFI was pretty much for Intel processors only at the time still.

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Slowpoke47

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[Slowpoke47]

mn– wrote:

Well, the Remote Wake Up could well be relevant.

This machine has been running today for about 6 hours now, mostly in sleep mode, a few short periods of use during that time.  So far, there have been no instances of “auto-wakeup” today, and we have put the pc to sleep several times either via the Start menu or by letting the 15-minute timer setting deploy.

Cautiously optimistic, fingers crossed.

Edit: About 3:30 PM- no joy, same symptoms, system exits sleep without input.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 11 months ago by Slowpoke47.

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Same computer, with Mint Mate 19.2 booted.  Linux version of sleep (“suspend”) seems to work without a problem.  Conclusion- the misbehaving sleep function derives from Windows, not BIOS.

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Might have another clue here.  On cold boot, the initial screen has a message , to the effect that “previous attempts to start this computer have failed at checkpoint D0.”  Found a 10 year old thread on a Dell forum with a discussion on this and there were various symptoms connected with it that included not maintaining “sleep” mode.  A Dell moderator posted a link to an updated BIOS- v.1.1.4.  My pc has v.1.0.6.

The link seems not to work and I could not find this updated BIOS for my machine (Inspiron 519) on the Dell site.  Likely no sympathy from Dell for an old machine like this.  Anyone think this is worth pursuing?

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You could try emailing Dell, could not find any newer BIOS than 1.0.6 either. The weird sites one should not go to for anything using Google search do not even have that listed version.

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GoneToPlaid wrote:

This could be caused by Prefetch and Superfetch settings, which will cause Windows to load programs which Windows “thinks” that you will use around certain times of the day, or which Windows “thinks” that you will run either immediately or very soon after booting your computer.

Well. since we will be abandoning W7 as it slips beneath the waves, I don’t plan to pursue this any further.

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