PC refused to go to sleep despite proper sleep/power settings

[vavavroom]

I have the display set to go dark after 5 minutes and the pc to fall asleep after 20 minutes of inactivity. All the peripherals other than the printer have proper power switches that are set to "off." The printer has never interfered with the power/sleep settings. For the last few days, I had to put the pc manually to sleep because it had stopped going to sleep on its own. The screen went into power save mode but the PC kept running as evidenced by the HD activity light and the steady power button light.

Tonight I decided to investigate. I entered powerconfig /requests in the command line to see what was requesting power. The search showed the printer spooler was requesting power. I opened the printer queue and there was nothing waiting to be printed. I deleted all old projects in the printer queue. I ran powerconfig /requests again and it showed no longer a power request by the printer.

The PC still refused to go to sleep. I then remembered that I had recently connected my iPad via Bluetooth to the pc. And indeed, my iPad was still connected to my PC via Bluetooth. Once BT was off on the PC, the PC started falling asleep according to the sleep/power settings.

 

[demarpaint]

Apple and Windows don't always play well together, at least that has been my experience.

 

[97prizm]

Try updating drivers or firmware

 

[samven]

And thats the problem when the machines get smarter than the people using them, and I am not picking on any individual. The programmers have the software doing so many things in the background that dont show to the user you have no idea what the machine is doing at any given time.
I turned on an old Windows 10 machine that I stopped using years ago when I switched to linux to try and find some pictures. It automatically connected via wifi on my hotspot and started upgrading the software with no notice. I thought it was acting a bit sluggish and did not notice until later that it burned through 8 gig of my 15 gig monthly allotment with no indication of what it was doing in the background. Then I remembered why I got rid of Windows.

 

[vavavroom]

Apple and Windows don't always play well together, at least that has been my experience.

The sleep and power settings on the PC are easily foiled and I have run into issues with it on occasion I used AirDroid to move files from the PC to the iPad via BT and forgot to turn BT off once I was done. I have a BT mouse and it doesn't affect the sleep settings. My experience with Apple and cross-platform use is limited.

 

[vavavroom]

Try updating drivers or firmware

Everything is up to date!

 

[demarpaint]

The sleep and power settings on the PC are easily foiled and I have run into issues with it on occasion I used AirDroid to move files from the PC to the iPad via BT and forgot to turn BT off once I was done. I have a BT mouse and it doesn't affect the sleep settings. My experience with Apple and cross-platform use is limited.

I find Windows can be a royal PITA at times. Especially when you're tying it into Apple in some way.

 

[vavavroom]

And thats the problem when the machines get smarter than the people using them, and I am not picking on any individual. The programmers have the software doing so many things in the background that dont show to the user you have no idea what the machine is doing at any given time.
I turned on an old Windows 10 machine that I stopped using years ago when I switched to linux to try and find some pictures. It automatically connected via wifi on my hotspot and started upgrading the software with no notice. I thought it was acting a bit sluggish and did not notice until later that it burned through 8 gig of my 15 gig monthly allotment with no indication of what it was doing in the background. Then I remembered why I got rid of Windows.

What doesn't help is that user interfaces are increasingly designed to be simplified. While that cuts down on clutter it also requires more digging, for example, to see if BT is on.

 

[missingcurlybracket]

If you run powercfg /a, is S0 Low Power Idle or S3 sleep available on your system?

MS and OEM’s have been messing with the classic “power off, keep RAM powered” S3 sleep in favor of chasing the always-on, usually-connected S0 “Modern Standby” to try to go head-to-head with iPad’s and other mobile OS-based devices which can keep doing things while “sleeping”

Problem is, not only do people use their PC’s in a different way than their phones which dampens the potential benefits, it’s nowhere as reliable as before. If conditions aren’t right, batteries can drain, laptops can cook themselves in enclosed environments (like a backpack) - heck, I installed an M.2 SSD in a Dell Latitude tablet that apparently didn’t support Modern Standby and my battery drain was 8% per hour until I figured out the cause! (It makes me want to get a Mac if I’m forced to get a newer computer in the future - especially with the power and thermal efficiency benefits of the new chips, but legacy application and games prevent it. I’ve seen anecdotes of sleep malfunctioning there too depending on OS update version unfortunately albeit not as common.)

Some laptops have the option to reenable S3, sometimes referred to as Linux sleep in the BIOS. My ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen4 has it, my previous Dell XPS 15 9510 did not, but the previous 9500 may have had it. Sometimes BIOS updates remove the toggle so watch out.

My work laptop is S0 Low Power Idle/Modern Standby only and while I haven’t had too much trouble on-the-go (which is rare since I’m usually docked), I found that “sleep” doesn’t power off the keyboard or anything like I expect from my X1 when docked.

For you, if you don’t have the option to switch to S3, you may have to switch to Hibernating almost exclusively. Extra waiting as it saves and restores state, but it’ll definitely won’t be bad with an SSD but it’ll be off, no fans, no lights.

 

[vavavroom]

If you run powercfg /a, is S0 Low Power Idle or S3 sleep available on your system?

MS and OEM’s have been messing with the classic “power off, keep RAM powered” S3 sleep in favor of chasing the always-on, usually-connected S0 “Modern Standby” to try to go head-to-head with iPad’s and other mobile OS-based devices which can keep doing things while “sleeping”

Problem is, not only do people use their PC’s in a different way than their phones which dampens the potential benefits, it’s nowhere as reliable as before. If conditions aren’t right, batteries can drain, laptops can cook themselves in enclosed environments (like a backpack) - heck, I installed an M.2 SSD in a Dell Latitude tablet that apparently didn’t support Modern Standby and my battery drain was 8% per hour until I figured out the cause! (It makes me want to get a Mac if I’m forced to get a newer computer in the future - especially with the power and thermal efficiency benefits of the new chips, but legacy application and games prevent it. I’ve seen anecdotes of sleep malfunctioning there too depending on OS update version unfortunately albeit not as common.)

Some laptops have the option to reenable S3, sometimes referred to as Linux sleep in the BIOS. My ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen4 has it, my previous Dell XPS 15 9510 did not, but the previous 9500 may have had it. Sometimes BIOS updates remove the toggle so watch out.

My work laptop is S0 Low Power Idle/Modern Standby only and while I haven’t had too much trouble on-the-go (which is rare since I’m usually docked), I found that “sleep” doesn’t power off the keyboard or anything like I expect from my X1 when docked.

For you, if you don’t have the option to switch to S3, you may have to switch to Hibernating almost exclusively. Extra waiting as it saves and restores state, but it’ll definitely won’t be bad with an SSD but it’ll be off, no fans, no lights.

S0 is not supported
S1 is not supported
S2 is not supported
S3 is available
Hibernation is not enabled (I never cared for that mode)
Hybrid Sleep is not available

It's not a big deal. I usually don't leave BT on.

 

[missingcurlybracket]

S0 is not supported
S1 is not supported
S2 is not supported
S3 is available
Hibernation is not enabled (I never cared for that mode)
Hybrid Sleep is not available

It's not a big deal. I usually don't leave BT on.

Welp, so much for my write up there.

Device Manager often has a toggle to disallow a device from waking your computer/keeping awake(?) which may/may not help.

 

[vavavroom]

Welp, so much for my write up there.

Device Manager often has a toggle to disallow a device from waking your computer/keeping awake(?) which may/may not help.

Thanks for the suggestion. There's no toggle that I can see. Neither is there a power management tab when I click through the settings tabs on the BT device. It's ok. I'll just have to remember to turn BT off when I'm done, something I usually manage to do.

 

[skyactiv]

I had to do a force quit of Safari the first time I fired up my new Mac mini M2 Pro when I tried to shut my computer off.