Sleep Return Timeout for Unattended Wake Up

Brink said:

Odd, but at least the registry changes are recognized by Power Options. I'm not sure why any changes you made in Power Options are not updated in the registry even after logging off/on.

True. The way I look at it, the Registry value changes are doing the job to keep my PC awake for overnight tasks.

I'm using the wakeup and sleep timeout to keep the PC's (Laptop & Desktop) awake when I run nightly AV scans.

I have a question about the Registry timeout:

Does Windows only apply the sleep timeout when the PC is awakend by Windows Task Scheduler?

For example, I'm running a nightly Acronis incremental Backup task. Acronis wakes up my PC to perform the Backup task. If my PC isn't woke up first by Windows Task Scheduler, does the Sleep Timeout Registry value still apply? Will it keep my PC awake for the length specified in the Registry value, regardless of how the PC was waked up (ie, not by a task in Windows Task Scheduler)?

Brink said:

Scoop,

The sleep return timeout setting is used when the PC is awakened by anything. :)

That was my guess. I can "semi-retire" my Task Scheduler "Wakeup" task.

I've often wondered why some AV products don't include a "wakeup PC to run unattended nightly HDD scans" option.

I'm running Norton 360. Prior to that, I was running ESET. Neither AV product has a wakeup option.

I have a friend that uses MacAfee and apparently that product includes a wakeup option.

Since Norton has an option to put the PC to sleep after completing the scan, that works well for me.

Scoop - I found that the registry WAS changed to reflect changes in "System unattended sleep timeout" made in the Power options plan but the changes appeared in a different registry key to the one shown above. I found the change I made in the "User" key - a few places down from the "Power Settings" key i.e.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes\8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c\238c9fa8-0aad-41ed-83f4-97be242c8f20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0]
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00001c20
in my case when I set 120 mins (= 1c20 hex)
(I know it's an old post but it might be relevant to a Googler)

P.S. Thanks Brink - that "invisible" 2 min default timeout had me baffled :)

pat100 said:

Scoop - I found that the registry WAS changed to reflect changes in "System unattended sleep timeout" made in the Power options plan but the changes appeared in a different registry key to the one shown above. I found the change I made in the "User" key - a few places down from the "Power Settings" key i.e.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\User\PowerSchemes\8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c\238c9fa8-0aad-41ed-83f4-97be242c8f20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0]
"ACSettingIndex"=dword:00001c20
in my case when I set 120 mins (= 1c20 hex)
(I know it's an old post but it might be relevant to a Googler)

Thanks for the info :). I looked at that location in my Registry before and after changing the unattended sleep timeout value from within the Control Panel/Power Options menu but I didn't see it change the User Registry value. Maybe that's due to my Win 7 setup or how it was installed.

I have a question -- I followed your instruction for how to change the sleep return timeout for unattended wake up and it seems to work -- I am using it for the Task Scheduler to wake the computer and do a few things.

My question is that for some reason, after the elasped time I placed in the registry (balanced power scheme in my case), my computer fails to return to sleep at all.

In my case, I set the time to 2 hours, the computer "woke up" as scheduled, but after the 2 hours, it failed to go back to sleep. I did not touch the keyboard or mouse...etc (I scheduled to wake @ 4:00am and when I got up at 7:00am, my computer was still on -- I assume it would have gone back to sleep at 6:00am). I did verify through command prompt that task scheduler did wake the computer from sleep at 4:00am.

Any ideas what is going on?? Is there any "time limit" when you change this feature -- only minutes versus hours...etc.

Thanks for your help.