Inexplicable (to me, at least) sleep problem

[Anak]

Good point, thank you! I've kept noticing that button as I've been testing, but for no reason whatsoever have not tried that, except that I remember doing just that once, likely a long time ago for a different problem which it did not solve.

Your Welcome.

If your situation continues after you've defaulted once with your adjustments, go back to the power plan and default again, only this time, add the motion to Click on Change Advanced Power Settings, right above where it says Restore Default Settings for this plan.

After the advanced settings window opens, make sure you select the plan you were trying to fix is selected in the drop down box. Then click on the Restore plan defaults. Click on Apply, then OK, that action should place you back on the Edit Plan Settings window, (your starting point).
There you can click on Save Changes and that action should take you back to the Power Options window. Click either on the red X (in the upper right corner of the window) or open the file menu and close.

Test for a time suitable to you, observe, and make your adjustments, if the defaults hold.
In my situation I defaulted both the power plan and the advanced settings for it, again hoping it helps yours. I did not mention the "advanced" tip earlier because I did not know if it would be need or not. But, I mention it now.

I would send myself an email reminding me to try Default, except that I would then have to remember to check my email...

I see you do not have Visitor or Private messages (VM or PM's) set on your profile page. It would behoove you to at least have Private Messages active. Vm's and Pm's can be set at: User CP | Edit Options.

If I do not hear from you through this thread in a few days I will post again to remind you. Say near the end of next week to see how you made out.
I have both open, and you may certainly approach me either way (VM or PM) to ask me "Was there something I was supposed to try?"

Your suggestion shall be tried later: Right now, I've got my computer running SiriusXM's Saturday morning four-hour "Baroque and Beyond" program (my wife and I look forward to that every Saturday,) during which the computer never goes to sleep even when sleep is working properly, nor would I want it to go to sleep.

I also enjoy the classics, as I write this I'm streaming Wagner's, Siegfried Idyll; Performed by the Members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Georg Solti

Ahh...But my heart belongs to Mozart.

You wrote "fēowertyne niht": Is that a Welsh translation of Anglo-Saxon?

I better know this, my wife has Celtic and Welsh ancestry. And, I believe it is. I ask rhetorically. You do know what it translates to don't you?

17c. contraction of Middle English fourteniht, from Old English fēowertyne niht, literally "fourteen nights," preserving the ancient Germanic custom of reckoning by nights, mentioned by Tacitus in "Germania" xi. Related: Fortnightly.
Source: Online Etymology Dictionary

Fēowertyne niht's origins started before the 11th century during the age of Old English (500-1100 AD) around the accepted time of the Anglo-Saxon occupation of England in the fifth century with Old Welsh and Latin from the Romans (Tacitus) being added to the mix.

But, the local population's were notorious for keeping the languages they grew up with. Over time fēowertyne niht developed into Fortnight.
Because of the timeline I would say it is an absorption of Welsh (the language of origin ) with Roman (Latin), and Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) when they showed up. Not a translation, that finally melded into fortnight.

The only thing that disturbs me is that Tacitus Lifetime was: Born: 56 AD, Gaul, France, and Died: 117 AD.
Born in Gaul he certainly had time to observe the Germanic people, but to apply those observations to a culture 300 to 400 years hence is extraordinary.

References:
Language evolution
A Brief History of the English Language
Old and Middle Welsh
List of English words of Anglo-Saxon origin | Fortnight

Click on Show Detail to see THE GERMANIA OF TACITUS (Paragraph 64). If you want to check the source, click on it and scroll until you see 64 below the paragraph. I underlined the pertinent paragraph in this detail:

 

THE GERMANIA OF TACITUS

settles the question, these matters, too, must be
thoroughly debated at a meeting of the chiefs. The
general assembly is held regularly on fixed days (except
in the instance of a sudden emergency arising) either
at new or at full moon, for they hold these times to be
the most auspicious date for entering upon their discus-
sions. They reckon time by nights instead of by days as
we do, and all their engagements and arrangements are
made on this system ; the day is counted in with the
previous night.

Their perfect independence of one another involves
this drawback, that they never reach their trysting-place
together nor obey the conditions of their summons, but
two or three days are always wasted by the unpunctuality
of the late comers. When the general opinion is that the
time has come to begin, they all take their seats, arms
in hand. Silence is commanded by the priests, on
whom now devolves the task of maintaining order. Then
the king or a chief, according to the speaker's age or
rank or fame or eloquence, is heard by the assembly ;
but he is listened to rather as a man whose influential
character carries weight than as one who has the power
to command. If the proposal finds no favour, its rejec-
tion is signified by groaning ; if it is accepted, the war-
riors clash their spears. Approval expressed by the
clashing of arms is the form of assent held in the
highest honour.

XII. Before the general assembly, likewise, criminals
may be charged and may be tried for their lives. The

penalties vary with the crime. Traitors and renegades

64
Source: Archive.org

That reckoning stuck with people and became the term Fortnight, if you really want to expand your mind, search for Fortnight and Shakespeare.



An incantation? I might be able to dig one up for you.

My Aunt Helen had many............... And, she made a fine Boillo....The drink.

 

[Not Myself]

Anak: Given the length of your latest reply, and given that it is 0547 local, rather than my editing it and adding my replies, suffice it to say that I have printed it, and shall pursue your suggestions.

In terms of time, please understand that this may turn out to be a very lengthy process. If, for example, I keep firewall and anti-virus from loading, I will have to turn off the router, so that i do not expose the computer for what could be several hours of test sleep for x hours, then y hours, etc. However, I cannot do that while my wife prepares for the first faculty meeting of the year in preparation for the upcoming school year, as she needs Internet access and access to the printers, which are on my computer and which she uses through the WiFi that is controlled by the router. Hence, it might not even be until next week that I can even start on some of the testing, that first faculty meeting being a week from tomorrow.

One quick aside: While I'm somewhat familiar with Tacitus, she is much more so, as she is the family classicist, while I'm the resident medievalist.

 

[Anak]

At your leisure, M'Lord

 

[Not Myself]

If your situation continues after you've defaulted once with your adjustments, go back to the power plan and default again, only this time, add the motion to Click on Change Advanced Power Settings, right above where it says Restore Default Settings for this plan.

After the advanced settings window opens, make sure you select the plan you were trying to fix is selected in the drop down box. Then click on the Restore plan defaults. Click on Apply, then OK, that action should place you back on the Edit Plan Settings window, (your starting point).
There you can click on Save Changes and that action should take you back to the Power Options window. Click either on the red X (in the upper right corner of the window) or open the file menu and close.

Test for a time suitable to you, observe, and make your adjustments, if the defaults hold.
In my situation I defaulted both the power plan and the advanced settings for it, again hoping it helps yours. I did not mention the "advanced" tip earlier because I did not know if it would be need or not. But, I mention it now.

1. I did a Sleep restore your first way, which did not work well.

2. I sort of did a restore your second way. I put it that way as, when trying to follow your instructions, I did not quite understand the sequence. What I did do was go into my settings first, and click on the restore button there, and so on. I don't understand how i could first choose default, then fix my plan; I'm sure I am misinterpreting what you wrote.

When I was done, I rebooted, and could quickly see that this was not a good restart, as the desktop took a long time to reappear, and then all the icons went blank and took a long time to be restored.

Rather than restarting a second time, which usually fixes matters when this happens, I shut down, waited a few minutes, without unplugging, then turned the computer back on. This gave me an instant desktop, a sign of a good restart.

When the process was done, I tested sleep set at one minute; that worked, so I reset to 30 minutes/monitor, one hour/computer. I don't know if the machine was asleep at 1730, so don't know if it woke up to run the daily backup, but it was asleep around 2000.

Yesterday, it was asleep around 0500, so I checked SuperAntiSpyware log, which showed that the computer had awakened at 0445, and gone back to sleep a few minutes later. I did my usual morning on-line work.

Later, the computer was back asleep around 1000, but has not gone to sleep since then. I really hoped that the problem was fixed, given the behavior leading up to my waking the machine around 1000 yesterday; alas, that neither was no is the case, sigh.

===
Incidentally, I did remember why I had once reset sleep to no avail: When Snagit 12 was released, it had a bug that kept some computers from going to sleep, including mine. I was not aware of that when I tried the sleep reset, but as that did not help, I pondered what might be the cause of lack of sleep, realized that the last program update I had installed was Snagit, so I exited it, and sleep started working again.

On the Snagit forum, Techsmith, the producer of Snagit, kept saying that there would be an update to fix some problems with 12.0, but not the sleep problem, as they were having difficulty finding and fixing the bug. When the update was issued, there was nothing in the updates notes about sleep, but it had been fixed.

Edit of the previous two paragraphs: Having posted them, I decided to exit Snagit. I then reset Sleep to one minute, whereupon Sleep was restored! This is really weird, for two reasons:

a. The sleep problem started several weeks after I had downloaded and installed the Snagit update, meaning that it was not interfering with sleep until quite some time after I had installed it.

b. Snagit apparently does, again, interfere with sleep, but, also apparently, only after the computer has gone through a few sleep/awake cycles.

I shall report this truly odd finding to the Techsmith support agent who has been handling my two support tickets about Snagit 12.x, a person who is very patient and knowledgeable and clearly cares about customers.

 

[Not Myself]

Having worked last night and earlier today, Sleep failed again. This time, I remembered to run powercfdg -requests, and found the information in the attached screen shot.

As I have no idea what this means, I can only assume that it is what caused sleep to fail. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who can help me figure this out. For all I know, it is a symptom caused by one of the myriad of entries in my startup set; if so, I likely need to disable it, but I have no way of knowing which such startup item is the culprit.

Although I had rn -requests perhaps three or four times previous to today's run, I never saw this particular item, but wonder if it might have occurred before and if it might be a pointer to an underlying problem that is causing the sleep failures.



==
I took the screen shot about thirty minutes ago. Just after posting this message, I ran -requests again, and it showed nothing. I then reset sleep to 1 minute, and both the monitor and the computer went to sleep. I don't need any more confusion, being the long-time possessor of a large amount thereof, so I'm just left wondering what this was all about, why the computer seemed to have yet another failed sleep episode, given that it was well after the 2-hour setting that I found it awake and that it would not go to sleep when I set it to one minute, any now -request is empty and sleep works.

 

[Anak]

Uninstall Snagit until the sleep problem that is acknowledged by the Author to be problematic with sleep is fixed: https://support.techsmith.com/entries/Snagit: How to uninstall Snagit Test for sleep problem.

Some members here like: FastStone Screen Capture

I could go further, but let me ask, do you have other devices that can be networked like a phone or printer attached to your machine when the sleep problem happens, other computers?

I ask because srvnet.sys is a server network driver and if any device that can make a request is attached to your machine, it will wake it up.
Its actions can be overridden but you might/will? have problems with the other devices.

 

[Not Myself]

Uninstall Snagit until the sleep problem that is acknowledged by the Author to be problematic with sleep is fixed: https://support.techsmith.com/entries/Snagit: How to uninstall Snagit Test for sleep problem.

Some members here like: FastStone Screen Capture

I could go further, but let me ask, do you have other devices that can be networked like a phone or printer attached to your machine when the sleep problem happens, other computers?

I ask because srvnet.sys is a server network driver and if any device that can make a request is attached to your machine, it will wake it up.
Its actions can be overridden but you might/will? have problems with the other devices.

Thanks for asking, but I believe I have finally figured out what has been causing the problem(s.) I am not yet totally certain, as I'm waiting to hear back, but it looks to me as though the actual cause was visible but that I had no understanding of what I was seeing. On top of that, a day or so I found that there were actually two problems; I had not seen the second one as it is coming from my wife's computer, and that machine was off for some five weeks while she was out of town.

1. Problem one, the one that likely started the sleeplessness, is not Snagit at all; rather, it is most likely Raxco Perfect Disk. I had run powercfg -requests a few times, and had seen a reference to PerfectDisk, but as I had not the slightest comprehension of what -requests was telling me, I ignored the reference. Yesterday, for the second time, I saw on-line a reference to powercfg -energy.

I had run that once, and looked at the resulting log file, which did not seem to have any clue to my sleep problem. I ran it again yesterday, at a time when -requests had the PerfectDisk entry showing. The PD entry was shown in the -energy log as having sent a "do not sleep" command to the computer! The PD entry was still showing in -requests a few hours later, so I opened PD, and found that it was not running at all well. I filed a support ticket with Raxco, and got a prompt reply, whcih was not helpful, as when I opened the ticket, I had not yet discovered that the program was probably corrupt. I replied to Raxco, and it is a reply to that email that I am now waiting for. I think that PD issues that command when it is defragging, and then cancels it, or at least is supposed to cancel it. Now, I have to reboot to get rid of the command, something I have not had to do before during the several years that I have used PD.

In short, I might have been able to solve the sleep mystery some time ago IF I had had any understanding of -requests, and IF the first time I ran -energy, the PD command to not sleep had been present. This episode has no relation to anything I had ever seen previously, thus I not only did not understand it, I did not even know what questions to ask.

2. Problem two is also one that I had not encountered until a few days ago. After some researching on-line, I finally found out the meaning of a line in -requests I had never seen before, which referred to srvnet. The line means, in my case, that my wife's machine, for reasons of which I also have no understanding, is asking for something, and that something also shows in the -energy report as telling the machine to not go to sleep.

Unlike the PD request, which now never quits (and I'm sure that is due to what I think is a corrupt copy of PD,) the srvnet request does get deleted from the powercfg -requests report when the other computer is asleep. I was able to prove this by putting that machine to sleep yesterday; after several minutes, I ran -requests, and the srvnet line was no longer there. I now believe that it was pure coincidence that I happened to exit Snagit just at almost the exact moment that the srvnet was deleted, my wife's computer having gone to sleep a few minutes earlier.

I've carried out at least three operations that supposedly stop the srvnet difficult even if the other computer does send a request, so far with no luck. There is one that I've not carried out: Remove both machines from Homegroup, shut both of them down, wait a few minutes, restart and re-establish Homegroup.

At least, at last, I have some hope that I am approaching solutions to the sleep difficulties.

==
A brief, likely unimportant afterthought: The request from my wife's computer may not actually be something new: During the school year, weekdays, her computer is asleep much of the day, and may well be put to sleep before mine is even ready to go to sleep (pre-PerfectDisck problem, of course,) and if her's is not asleep, may well explain why I notice my machine awake when I expect it to be, and to have gone to sleep eventually, her's having done so first. During the summer months, as both machines are likely to be awake much of the day, leven if her computer has sent a request, it would not have been noticeable.

==
Second observation: -requests did not show PerfectDisk until perhaps an hour ago. As it was still there just a minute or so ago, I went into TaskManager and ended the PD process, and the request was gone from powercfg immediately; this seems to reinforce my theory that it is a corrupt copy of PerfectDisk that has been the culprit all along. After all, if the request it sends is no longer there, then sleep ought to work. (Right now, as we are listening to XMRadio, there is a request from Realtek audio, which explains why the computer does not go to sleep when we are listening to XMRadio on-line.)

 

[Anak]

What version of PD do you have? I've found in this really long thread that any version below 13.x will cause sleep problems:

Anybody using Perfect Disk 12.x? Has a problem even with stealth patrol and scheduling disabled - that will post a power request if just the user interface is opened. Preventing the machine from going to sleep. But there will be a post in powercfg -requests,

Source 35th post down (why doesn't MS TN have permalinks?: Windows 8 does not go to sleep - how to identify the device/app preventing sleep

#56 the batch file seems to work for some.
#94 has your home-group suggestion.

This may help explain power management: (iBoyd) » Windows 7 Power Management: Fixing PC Insomnia

 

[gregrocker]

Uninstall Perfect Disk to see the difference. Win7 built-in defragger works fine, and if you want a boot-time defrag to get at System Files then you only need on-demand Puran free Defrag .

The tools and methods which work best to assure you that you will get and keep a perfect install for as long as you stick with them are compiled in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 and are based on tens of thousands of installs we've directly helped with here since beta.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219487-clean-reinstall-factory-oem-windows-7-a.html#post1839164

 

[Not Myself]

What version of PD do you have? I've found in this really long thread that any version below 13.x will cause sleep problems:

Anybody using Perfect Disk 12.x? Has a problem even with stealth patrol and scheduling disabled - that will post a power request if just the user interface is opened. Preventing the machine from going to sleep. But there will be a post in powercfg -requests,

Source 35th post down (why doesn't MS TN have permalinks?: Windows 8 does not go to sleep - how to identify the device/app preventing sleep

#56 the batch file seems to work for some.
#94 has your home-group suggestion.

This may help explain power management: (iBoyd) » Windows 7 Power Management: Fixing PC Insomnia

I'm using the latest update of PerfectDisk 13; I did have 12, never saw the problem, but as I rarely open the program, just letting it run, I likely never encountered the problem with 12.x. I really think that PD is supposed to issue the "don't sleep" request when it is doing something, but then release it, which, if true, is what is not happening on my computer.

I'll take another look at the links you provided, perhaps I overlooked something.

 

[Not Myself]

Uninstall Perfect Disk to see the difference. Win7 built-in defragger works fine, and if you want a boot-time defrag to get at System Files then you only need on-demand Puran free Defrag .

The tools and methods which work best to assure you that you will get and keep a perfect install for as long as you stick with them are compiled in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 and are based on tens of thousands of installs we've directly helped with here since beta.

Rather than remove a program that, until a few weeks ago, worked perfectly, and which really seems to me to have become corrupted, I shall simply wait to hear back from Raxco on how to fix my copy of PerfectDisk.

 

[gregrocker]

Even if you paid for the program you can always reinstall it This often will
ReSolve corruption.

 

[Not Myself]

Even if you paid for the program you can always reinstall it This often will
ReSolve corruption.

I am well aware of that; in fact, I have the verification email of my purchase of version 13.x, which specifically states that my download link is valid until 23 January 2015, one year after the purchase.

I expect to hear from Raxco tomorrow, and I prefer to wait to see what they have to say, which might just be to reinstall.

 

[Not Myself]

When Lew Wallace, he of Ben Hur, was Territorial Governor of New Mexico, he coined the aphorism that things that apply elsewhere do not necessarily apply in New Mexico, which is all too true.

I just woke my computer, whereupon the laser printer produced a document that my wife had sent from her computer. The system, and the two printers, are on WiFi, but the printer drivers are on my machine, which is why her print job did not run until I woke my computer.

Where does Lew Wallace enter into this? I ran powercfg -requests, and found no request from the other computer! Either that fixed itself, or one of my many attempts to block srvnet finally took effect. The first possibility is certainly a "Lew Wallaceism."

Either way, if this holds, then I'm down to only one sleep problem.

 

[Not Myself]

Quick Update:

1. PerfectDisk is sending two requests when it runs its daily scheduled defrag, and only releasing one of them. As these requests have a "don't sleep" component, to keep the computer awake while the defrag is running, that explains why the computer has not been sleeping.

I can kill the remaining process by ending the PDEngine.exe process, but then I have to re-enable PD so that it will run the next scan. I just got a message from the Raxco support agent who is handling the case, stating that she will look into it; that was after I sent her a screen shot yesterday showing the two requests and the the single one.

2. HomeGroup: The problem with HomeGroup keeping a computer awake under Windows 7, based on some further searching I've done with different Google entries, appears to be endemic and not really solvable. I did find one thread that included Registry changes, but as I have no idea who posted, nor have I seen it anywhere else, I'm not going to risk making those changes.

Given the way that my wife and I use our computers, it is a nuisance, rather than a major problem. For example, a few evenings ago, she had awakened her computer, then, when it went to sleep, mine followed shortly thereafter. Had she not done so, mine would have gone to sleep perhaps a hour earlier.

 

[Not Myself]

1. The PerfectDisk problem was finally isolated and fixed; it had to do with at least one setting undr Global Settings/Drive Options. As none of those settings have anything to do with how I use PD, nor with anything on my computer, I disabled all of them, and when PD ran its daily defragmentation session today, it sent only one `don't sleep' request, which was removed as soon as the session ended.

The problem had nothing to do with my Startup list, as PD does not even use that list; rather, it is governed by two Windows Services, one of which monitors any PD schedules, and if a schedule is found, calls the PDEngine, which is the defrag module. That, too, was something that I had to figure out: I checked the list, did not find PD, so started hunting for whatever it is that runs PD, found the services.

2. The HomeGroup sleep problem also seems to be fixed. Having found that my computer was not sending a request to my wife's computer (which may have stopped when I entered, in a few different formats the command I found on-line,) her's was sending one to mine. I entered the command on her computer a few days ago, which did not seem to work.

However, a while ago, with her computer awake, there was no request found on my computer using powercfg -requests. Curiously, there was a request later, when I ran powercfg again, but that request disappeared, and has not reappeared.

====
My thanks to all who tried to assist me. It was not easy to finally solve the problems, especially the critical one with PerfectDisk; as I wrote earlier, it was a matter of my learning how to find out what was causing the problem, then running powercfg -energy to find out that the PD request specifically was for a no-sleep condition. Raxco gave me some things to try, none of which solved the problem, but which led to my finally finding and changing the settings, at least one of which had to have been the cause.

Raxco's suggestions eliminated a few major variables, which enabled me to search for any other settings to change, and, thus, helped lead me to, at last, eliminating the second no-sleep command that PD was issuing. I don't believe that I had ever changed any of the settings that I deselected yesterday, but that I don't recall having so done does not mean that I definitely did not do so.

Si finis bonus est, totum bonum erit

If the end is good, everything will be good. (Or, as Shakespeare put it, "All's Well That Ends Well".)

Things seem to be well.

 

[Anak]

Your welcome, and thank you for keeping us updated, it sounds like you have everything finally sorted out.

 

[gregrocker]

I like your persistence. I also do not let go of such a problem.

Do you recommend Perfect Disk, and may I ask for what exact purpose?

I once used it for its boot time scan but much prefer Puran on demand now for some years.

Many here contend Win7 scheduled defrag is perfectly sufficient and I've seen no issues with it but still prefer a boot defrag to get at System files and help with boot duration. But I don't think I'd want it scheduled or even frequent since Win7 shows amazing resilience without any need for heavy cleaning and defrag.

 

[Not Myself]

I like your persistence. I also do not let go of such a problem.

Do you recommend Perfect Disk, and may I ask for what exact purpose?

I once used it for its boot time scan but much prefer Puran on demand now for some years.

Many here contend Win7 scheduled defrag is perfectly sufficient and I've seen no issues with it but still prefer a boot defrag to get at System files and help with boot duration. But I don't think I'd want it scheduled or even frequent since Win7 shows amazing resilience without any need for heavy cleaning and defrag.

I am somewhat notorious for not letting go of problems, such as the time that I could not get a town council to change an ordinance regarding parking near fire hydrants. I decided not to attend one council meeting, at which time the chief town marshal told the council that, if they did not alter the ordinance that night, he would subpoena me to appear at the next such meeting; the ordinance was immediately amended.

Yes, I recommend PerfectDisk, although it may be that Windows 7 does not need any assistance in defragging. PD does not have to run on a schedule, you can simply open it and click on the run button. I've used PD for many years, and found it particularly useful with early versions of Windows, especially when I was doing a great deal of writing. In particular, I was creating a large and complex training manual in two versions, one for the instructor, one for the student. This required constant revisions, especially as this was the first manual on the subject, so I had nothing to use as references for what I was writing, and some of those revisions were large.

Due to past experience, I just set PD to run every day, which seems to take about ten minutes and does not interfere with what I"m doing, as I have PD set to low priority. Exactly why I happened to set the start time of scheduled scans for 1114 instead of 1115 is quite unknown; I was amused to see that recently, when I started opening PD to carry out the steps that Raxco recommended.

I noticed in my peregrinations through PD that it showed I'd not run a boot scan for 160 days, soI ran one Saturday, and it did not seem to do much, which might be an indication that such a thiing is not really needed with Windows 7, but that is just a supposition on my part.

 

[gregrocker]

Do you have Win7 defrag set for weekly run as is often default in Scheduled Tasks?