Unable to wake from sleep because USB keyboard/Mouse not allowed to

I have two Zotac ZBox CI320 Nano PCs, both running Windows 7 HP, both with the same problem...

Integrated graphics is Intel HD Graphics. Monitor is connected via HDMI. Everything is fine until the system goes to sleep or the display times out. Then, when I try to wake up the machine/display, I get "HDMI NO SIGNAL". (Using VNC from my iMac, everything works but the screen attached to the PC is still black. Not sure if the VNC Mirror driver isn't invoking the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, here! Bonus points to anyone who GETS that!)

In Device Manager, if I go to HID Keyboard Device or HID-compliant mouse, there's no Power Management tab. If I go to the Generic USB Hub that they're connected to, there IS a Power Management tab but "Allow this device to wake the computer" is grayed out.

In an elevated command shell (running as administrator)...

powercfg -lastwake
returns:
Wake History Count - 0

POWERCFG -DEVICEQUERY wake_programmable
returns:
Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160

POWERCFG -DEVICEENABLEWAKE "HID-compliant mouse"
returns:
You do not have permission to enable or disable device wake.

POWERCFG -a
returns:
The following sleep states are available on this system: Standby ( S3 ) Hibernate Hybrid Sleep
The following sleep states are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

The only sleep settings I can find in BIOS are:
Enable ACPI auto configuration (disabled)
Enable Hibernation (Enabled)
ACPI Sleep State (S3 [Suspend to RAM])
Lock Legacy Resources (Disabled)
Deep Sleep S5 support (Disabled)

I've tried changing most of the above settings but nothing seemed to change.

I haven't tried hibernating and don't really want to use it since these machines have SSDs.

I've been working on this for three solid days with a lot of lost sleep. Very frustrated. If you can think of something I haven't tried, please let me know.

I'm not clear on this. Do you have the keyboard and mouse attached to a USB hub rather than directly plugged into the computer?
If so, I suspect that's the problem.

Also from looking at the hardware, there are 2 USB ports on the front and four USB 3 ports on the back. Plug the mouse and keyboard into the front ports. Mice and keyboards don't always like USB 3 ports.

Ploders right,
USB3 drivers DO NOT exist in W7 you have to d/l them from the device managers website.

and the HDMI settings controls will be part of your graphics driver.

Roy

plodr said:

I'm not clear on this. Do you have the keyboard and mouse attached to a USB hub rather than directly plugged into the computer?
If so, I suspect that's the problem.

No, the keyboard and mouse are attached to the computer. If you look at Device Manager - on any Windows PC - you'll see various USB hubs (some of which are labeled "Generic USB Hub"- that's what I was talking about in my initial post.

Also from looking at the hardware, there are 2 USB ports on the front and four USB 3 ports on the back. Plug the mouse and keyboard into the front ports. Mice and keyboards don't always like USB 3 ports.

Yup. Very aware of that. Both devices are plugged into the front ports.

That said, when I did the initial Windows install, the mouse and keyboard were plugged into a KVM (which has a keyboard emulator for each port) and the USB cable from the KVM was connected to the PC. (It may even have been in one of the USB 3 ports on the back.) Does anyone think this could be the reason that "Allow this device to wake the computer" is grayed out? I guess I'll try reinstalling Windows, bypassing the KVM and with the mouse and keyboard plugged directly into the front USB (2.0) ports. I'm also wondering if using a UEFI thumb drive (and leaving the BIOS set to UEFI instead of switching it to Legacy) might make a difference.

OK, well I tried reinstalling Windows on one of these little crapboxes. Made sure the mouse and keyboard were plugged directly into USB 2.0 ports on the front of the unit. First thing I tried was setting the display to turn off after one minute. Works fine - with mouse or keyboard. Couldn't try waking from sleep because sleep isn't supported with the basic VGA driver, so the next thing I did was install the Intel HD Graphics drivers. Restarted, tested wake from sleep - won't do it. I'm really at a loss here. On the power management tab (for every device that has one -- except the network cards), the box for "Allow this device to wake..." is grayed out and I have no clue how to change that.

Only thing I can suggest is a workaround. Set the display to never turn off. When you are going to be away from the computer, press the power button on the monitor. I do that on the desktop computers here.