What lack of events determine when sleep mode initiates?

In control panel/power options you can set sleep mode to occur for both the display and the hard disk.

I've set both of these to sleep after 20 minutes. Is it just pressing a keyboard key or moving the mouse or pressing a mouse button that triggers a reset of the countdown clock for sleep activation? If I kicked off a long running program that required no user interaction (think full disk antivirus scan), could sleep occur after 20 minutes?

I run Win 7 Pro, 64-bit.

Thanks,

Set the sleep to 1 minute...
...start an antivirus scan
...wait 2 minutes and you will have your answer.

Some antivirus apps prevent sleep during a scan. Some online backup apps (like Mozy) do not prevent sleep and thus will fail to complete if the user allows sleep.

Sleep and hibernation: frequently asked questions

Your question is the 5th in the link.
Programs and external devices can prevent sleep. The FAQ also describes how to disable this feature.

oneeyed said:

Sleep and hibernation: frequently asked questions

Your question is the 5th in the link.
Programs and external devices can prevent sleep. The FAQ also describes how to disable this feature.

Yeah, it's not what prevents sleep that I'm looking for.... it's what prevents the pc from waking up. Or even, what wakes it up. If mouse movements, mouse clicks or keyboard presses are the only things that wake it up, then an absence of these would allow it to sleep. And when I run my antivirus program in the wee hours of the morning, when I'm asleep and far from my keyboard, that alone is not enough to prevent it from going to sleep, that that's causing my antivirus program to stop prematurely.

UsernameIssues said:

Set the sleep to 1 minute...
...start an antivirus scan
...wait 2 minutes and you will have your answer.

Some antivirus apps prevent sleep during a scan. Some online backup apps (like Mozy) do not prevent sleep and thus will fail to complete if the user allows sleep.

OK, that helps - thank you.

What triggers a wake up condition?

needsleep said:

....causing my antivirus program to stop prematurely.

There should be an option within Kaspersky to tell the app to not let the computer sleep during a scan. If not, we can create a batch file that does the following:
updates signatures
scans the computer
puts the computer to sleep

needsleep said:

~~~
What triggers a wake up condition?

I'm not sure.