Can anyone please shed any light on this?

Finally made the Windows 7 move on all workstations and I have been testing sleep mode on several machines. After many trials and tribulations - trying to understand Microsoft massive sleep changes since Vista (the big one being - the machine will not go back to sleep within the proper timeout window after an unattended wake-up with the High Performance Plan in place) - I decided to live with the way 7 sleeps - and even tho the bloody machine falls asleep every half hour if I am not on it - it's a pain but I am getting used to it.

One thing that I am NOT getting used to is this crap - as seen in the System Event log:

The system time has changed to ‎2010‎-‎06‎-‎17T06:11:26.500000000Z from ‎2010‎-‎06‎-‎17T03:46:49.531021100Z.

Seems that if a 7 machine is slumbering away - regardless of power plan set - when this "event" or whatever the f it is happens - the machine bolts awake and stays that way until the plan timeout - 30 minutes, 3 hours..whatever - expires.

What on God's green earth causes this event - and how do I shut it off? I have probed every service, applet and area in the OS trying to understand what causes it and I am tapped out.

Is it a motherboard problem? A weak CMOS battery....some BIOS thing that I do have set right. In my wife's case - she got totally pissed off with the 30 minute sleepfest that I told her about with the "balanced plan" in play and made me set her machine to sleep every five hours...

But of course if one of these "system time has changed" events occur - like at 12:37am...the damn machine will then stay away for 5 bloody hours as it attempts to fulfil the parameters of the power plan. Vista on the other hand:

A) Did not do this ridiculous event
B) If it did wake up for an event (Windows Update, Backup, Scheduled Task)...it would go back to sleep 120 seconds after being officially idle.

Really need to understand just WTF this event is and how to rip out whatever is causing it. For the record the event occurs on both mine and my wife's machine and we have the identical GigaByte mobos - so that may be related to some setting in the BIOS....

I look forward to anyone's insight on this.

Cheers!

VP

First thing is to check for a corrupt file, I'm thinking the Windows Time Service itself may be corrupted.

Go to Start and type scannow /sfc and when it shows in the run screen right mouse click and choose to run as administrator.

If nothing shows up as a problem file (which will need to be repaired id it does) do this:

Click on start, All programs, accessories, right click on command prompt and then click on “Run as administrator”.

Type each one of the command below and press enter.

net stop w32time

w32tm /unregister

w32tm /register

net start w32time

w32tm /resync

Reboot and monitor time.

This stops the Time Clock Service, restarts and resync's it, hopefully this will solve the issue.

If the issue persists then you can do this:

Click on start and then type services in the search bar.


Click on Services then scroll through the list that pops up and select windows time and then change Startup type from automatic to disabled.


Restart your computer and your time should change to the correct time.


Your clock will now rely on the CMOS battery fed clock on your mobo.

Fishbanjo,

Sounds like a great suggestion - if I had the time service running but it's been disabled for over month...and yet this message continues.

After a month of chasing it - methinks this bizarre message has absolutely nothing to do with the time service - as much as the word "time" in the message would indicate the latter.

Oddly - this message occurs with the time service on or off...therefore leads me to think it's definitely something else - perhaps GigaByte related.....and your CMOS comments make me think that's the right path....

But waking the machine up all the time for this? The system should just do a time sync when the box is up...this wake up crap is complete BS

Did it do this with the time service running? I wonder if you were to download CCleaner and run it that the Registry still has the Time Service run information in it and cleaning it out of the registry with CCleaner and rebooting if that may solve the issue.

fishnbanjo said:

Did it do this with the time service running? I wonder if you were to download CCleaner and run it that the Registry still has the Time Service run information in it and cleaning it out of the registry with CCleaner and rebooting if that may solve the issue.

Yep...it appears on a dead fresh install. It appears if I totally disable the time service. It appears if I totally re-enable the time service.

To see if it's a specific hardware thing - I will be installed Windows 7 x64 onto a custom box with an Intel DP35DP this weekend - and if that box (totally different from these two Gigabytes) does NOT exhibit the issue - then I am onto something...but I won't know that until later this weekend....

I am frickin' stumped.

Here's one for you - check your Windows 7 system logs and tell me if you have ever seen this event message....

Brink said:

Hello Vocalpoint,

This can help show you how to change the Unattended Wake Up Return to Sleep Timout Period to what you would like it to be instead.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Have done this numerous times. It does not work...no matter what I set it to (mine is set for 2 minutes BTW) In my case - since I am on "Balanced"...no matter what event wakes the machine - my machine will not go back to sleep for 30 minutes - idle or not.

On my wife's machine - since she wants "on all the time" or minimal sleep - we have her set to 5 hours. And again - no matter what wakes the machine - or what "return to sleep timeout" is set...her machine will take 5 bloody hours to go back to sleep. If I set her machine to the High Performance plan - the machine will NEVER sleep after any wakeup event.

Again - thank you...I am growing very frustrated with this whoile scene...say what you will about Vista...but at least it slept and woke up properly. Without fail.

Cheers,

VP

Certainly will be interested in what happens with the new build and certainly understand your frustration. I do use the Time Service and have had Windows Update fail giving me a wrong time reported error and not allowing the updates, I changed the server it sync's with and the problem is resolved. I never let anything go to sleep and have had PC's that are more then 15 y/o run like that, they are either turned off or running full time unless on battery where I allow the monitor an GPU to sleep and automatic shutdown when 15 minutes of battery is rached, will be monitoring this thread.

fishnbanjo said:

Certainly will be interested in what happens with the new build and certainly understand your frustration. I do use the Time Service and have had Windows Update fail giving me a wrong time reported error and not allowing the updates, I changed the server it sync's with and the problem is resolved. I never let anything go to sleep and have had PC's that are more then 15 y/o run like that, they are either turned off or running full time unless on battery where I allow the monitor an GPU to sleep and automatic shutdown when 15 minutes of battery is rached, will be monitoring this thread.

We are running Windows Home Server here and absolutely dig the automated backup...so it's important to tuck them all in for the night and let them wakeup at 1am or whatever and have the backup do it's thing while we bag a bunch of zzzz's.

Vista Business SP2 worked perfectly - we would set all machines to High Performance and let them run full tilt all day...then manually stick them to sleep in the evening...they would wake at 1am...all would be backed up and ALL would return to sleep.

But so far - not a single one of these machines (using the identical hardware that was used with Vista) will sleep/wake correctly. And now this freakin "system time" message really has me boiling....

Hmmm, what settings are you allowing in High Performance? I'm itching to dig in. :)