W10 Laptop – Screen

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I have a Dell W10 laptop.  I have the setting set to turn the screen off after 15 minutes when the machine is plugged into house power.

The screen is not turning off!

What?

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Mine does.
Do you have a 3rd party app/setting like ‘wake-on-lan’.. that keeps your display/pc on ?

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Are you using a mouse which is left on and attached or connected?

Windows 11 Pro version 22H2 build 22621.1778 + Microsoft 365 + Edge

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Alex5723

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Just had this yesterday on a desktop. As b pointed out, it turned out to be the mouse. Replaced and blanks out fine now. If you don’t have a usb mouse maybe try updating touchpad drivers.

Never Say Never

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Been using a Radio Shack wireless USB mouse.  Pulled the ‘receiver’ out of the USB port.  Still not turning off.  Am rebooting with the mouse receiver out of the machine and will see what happens.

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b

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WSmmi16 wrote:

Been using a Radio Shack wireless USB mouse.  Pulled the ‘receiver’ out of the USB port.  Still not turning off.  Am rebooting with the mouse receiver out of the machine and will see what happens.

I am using Logitech BT mouse. Display turns off.

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Hope this can help you to fix this: In a elevated (Administrator) command prompt window or PowerShell session, using try this command ‘powercfg /requests’ to probably know if there are requests to keep the screen from turning off.

There are quite a few more options that the powercfg program has to help you track down an issue.

Also, at least one time long ago just changing the display setting timer setting to something else and restoring to your preferred time out caused Windows to remember the preference.

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Oops, left this part other information out: To see the other options for the powercfg command you can type powercfg /? (powercfg forward slash questionmark).

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I\’m Not A Robot wrote:

Oops, left this part other information out: To see the other options for the powercfg command you can type powercfg /? (powercfg forward slash questionmark).

Tried your suggestions – No Joy.  Attached is what I got using PowerShell as Administrator

 

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The command is incorrect.
There should be a space between powercfg and the “/”

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WSmmi16

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Well – I got the powercfg to work – that being said, What am I looking for?

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Did you use the ‘requests’ parameter, and does it report anything that may be keeping your monitor powered on after ‘DISPLAY:’?

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I\’m Not A Robot wrote:

Did you use the ‘requests’ parameter, and does it report anything that may be keeping your monitor powered on after ‘DISPLAY:’?

Everything that /requests displays is ‘NONE’  including Display

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The /waketimers parameter can show if there is a timer that keeps the system from sleeping.

You can try changing the monitor timeout from the command line.

A bit of a stretch, but have you looked in task scheduler to notice if there any curious entries from Microsoft or third party software that might keep your computer awake?

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After playing with the powercfg options a bit – all of them seem to indicate that ‘nothing is wrong’.

What I am now seeing at the top of the screen about 3/8 distance from the left side is a representation of my ‘arrow cursor’ that is visible as a constant image and cannot be moved or changed by the cursor that the mouse controls.  The mouse controlled cursor tends to ‘blink’ and is hard to control accurately.

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The ‘permanent pointer cursor’  appears in the box just to the right of the Shortcuts.

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Did it exhibit this issue prior to installing the wireless mouse? If not, uninstall any software and drivers associated with the wireless receiver and mouse. If it did, make sure you have updated drivers for touchpad.

You can also remove or disable the touchpad and see if it blanks out. Use your keyboard to navigate. or worse case reinstall the wireless mouse.

Never Say Never

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Wireless mouse has been used with this machine since it was bought in 2018.  The condition that I am seeing has only started within the past week or so.  All devices that are being used with the machine were attached and working as intended for the past year or more.

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No offense intended. I just know that I had a mouse cause the exact issue recently and it was one that worked fine for years. Was still working fine but only issue was the machine quit blanking the monitor. Removed it and the driver and monitor shut off after 15min. Changed the mouse and no more issues. Think it started going bad a month or so before because the screen would be on sporadically when it shouldn’t have been, but I assumed me walking through the house closing doors and stuff caused it. Then it got worse and monitor wouldn’t go off at all.

Never Say Never

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WSmmi16

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cyberSAR wrote:

No offense intended. I just know that I had a mouse cause the exact issue recently and it was one that worked fine for years. Was still working fine but only issue was the machine quit blanking the monitor. Removed it and the driver and monitor shut off after 15min. Changed the mouse and no more issues. Think it started going bad a month or so before because the screen would be on sporadically when it shouldn’t have been, but I assumed me walking through the house closing doors and stuff caused it. Then it got worse and monitor wouldn’t go off at all.

Winner!  Winner!  Chicken Dinner!

Removed the Radio Shack mouse.  Rebooted and installed a NEW Logitech wireless mouse.  All is good and the screen now times out.

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cyberSAR

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Don’t laugh but you jinxed me! Rebuilding a client’s machine the last couple days and everything has been working as expected. This morning I walk in and the monitor is on. WTH? Waited a bit and still on so start troubleshooting and a couple reboots later no luck. Unplugged the mouse that’s probably about 2-years old and monitor went off at 15 min. Plugged in another mouse and is working fine all day 🙂

Never Say Never

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I also spoke too soon.

When I changed the power plan for the power not to turn off when plugged in and the screen to turn off at a specified time (10 minutes) – upon rebooting with the USB antenna for the mouse removed the system reboots and there is no sign of the ‘false cursor’.  However, the touch pad does not present the real cursor.  Plug in the USB antenna for the wireless mouse and the real cursor becomes visible and able to be moved by the mouse.  The touchpad does not manipulate the cursor.

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When rebooting the system – the screen has two circular blobs in the bottom center of the screen.  Without making any moves with the wireless mouse the screen displays the wallpaper properly.  Once I make a movement with the wireless mouse, the pointer image appears in one of the circular blobs.  The image will mimic what ever image is generated by the cursor activity.  If not being moved, the cursor is not displayed on screen.  When the cursor is visible it is blinking at a rapid rate.

The touchpad on the laptop will not move the cursor, only the wireless mouse.  In set up the touchpad is configured to operate when a mouse is active.  I can hear the element of the touchpad ‘clicking’ when I press on the various parts of it.

I have looked through the ‘start menu’ and have not seen anything obvious (to me) that should be creating the circular blobs upon starting the system.

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Wow tough one. Video drivers? I’m sure you’ve tried sfc and dism. What about a repair install if all your drivers are updated? I get something weird like that remoting into some machines I maintain but clients don’t report any issues. Usually a right-click and refresh fixes it.

Never Say Never

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WSmmi16 wrote:

In set up the touchpad is configured to operate when a mouse is active. I can hear the element of the touchpad ‘clicking’ when I press on the various parts of it.

I’ve had something similar happen on my work laptop and the extra “blob” was the touchpad pointer.

Try setting the touchpad to only operate if there’s no mouse and, with the mouse plugged in, see if the extra “blob” disappears?

If so, then the touchpad and mouse drivers are interfering with each other and you’ll need to either update them to newer versions or roll them back to previous versions where you know you didn’t have this problem and see if that fixes things.

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alejr wrote:

WSmmi16 wrote:

In set up the touchpad is configured to operate when a mouse is active. I can hear the element of the touchpad ‘clicking’ when I press on the various parts of it.

I’ve had something similar happen on my work laptop and the extra “blob” was the touchpad pointer.

Try setting the touchpad to only operate if there’s no mouse and, with the mouse plugged in, see if the extra “blob” disappears?

If so, then the touchpad and mouse drivers are interfering with each other and you’ll need to either update them to newer versions or roll them back to previous versions where you know you didn’t have this problem and see if that fixes things.

Disabled the touchpad – rebooted

and now I have 4 blobs ??????

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Another thing –

I have called up some Google pages with buttons to activate actions.  For whatever the reason when I position the cursor over those buttons – nothing activates.  Right Click, Left Click – NOTHING.

Other, non-Google, pages seem to work properly.

 

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Updated the software to 22H2 and the screen still doesn’t turn off on the timing specified for it to turn off but the touchpad now works again.

Noticed that despite having up graded from 21H2, the date of the update is still showing the date from the 2021 update.

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WSmmi16 wrote:

the date of the update is still showing the date from the 2021 updating.

Since Windows 10 2004 all versions are the same and get the same updates.

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The laptop screen is now turning off at the appropriate time.

MFBM

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What I stated in the previous post worked for several weeks.

Now there are several manifestations – I reboot the machine and can’t control the cursor.

I reboot the machine and everything appears fine and shortly thereafter the machine turns off.

I is configured to stay on when it is connected to commercial power.

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I started the laptop up in a quiet environment.  In doing so I heard the cooling fan struggling to get started and once started is made a level of noise that would otherwise not be audible if there was background noise such as a TV running at the time.

When the laptop starts up from cold, everything is fine.  After a couple of hours, the outlet of the fan is warm to the touch and then the ‘fun and games’ start, where in the cursor has a mind of its own etc.

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Sounds like “Dust in the Fan” (apologies to Kansas).

Zig

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Using a infrared thermometer, after having the machine running for 15 to 30 minutes the exhaust from the cooling fans are registering 130 degrees and higher.

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That’s only 54° C which is well within the limits for laptop CPU temps.

Just FYI, “most” CPU’s won’t throttle (i.e. slow down the clock speed) until they reach 90 – 100° C and won’t actually shutdown (i.e. power off) until they’ve first throttled down but the temp still keeps rising and reaches ~105° C.

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I am not having issues with the CPU throttling operation.  My issue is that I ‘lose control’ of the cursor – it vaguely follows where the wireless mouse takes it – flashing and dissappearing on the way.  The touchpad on on the machine has no affect when this is happening.

The time the cursor can be controlled is decreasing with each use of the machine.  I am putting the machine to SLEEP at the end of each use.

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Took the machine to a ‘professional’ and, among other issues, they found the cooling fan was not operating properly and a replacement is on order.

Also mentioned finding ‘gunk’ on the touch screen.

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cooling fan was not operating properly

I rest my case (see above – and play the video).

Zig

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Back from the shop – outlet temperature is now 110 degrees with new fan installed.

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New cooling fan and its attached heat sink resolved the issue.

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