Variable SLEEP behavior.

[bilvihur]

Running Win 7 Home Premium on a custom desktop, all updates applied. Regardless of what happens to be running at the time, when I issue the SLEEP command at night, the HD stops spinning, the monitor goes dark, and the power light starts blinking. Then the following morning:
1) 5% of the time, power light will be blinking, one press of the power-on button will start the HD, I'll hear the ext speaker crackle, and the monitor will come on with last night's screens, ALL within 10-15 sec.
2) 15% of the time, the power light will be solid, the HD spinning, and moving the mouse will display the screen, just like it never went to sleep at all!
3) 80% of the time, the power light will be blinking, I'll press the power-on button, and WAIT 90 sec for the monitor to come on with last night's screen? I can boot in less time than that!
I can't relate the behavior to anything I'm doing at this end.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.

 

[nommy the first]

Hello Bilvihur,

What power plan are you currently using? If you don't know that, you can check it by following steps 1 to 3 shown below; please report this back.
And in the Power Plan settings, what is the "turn off hard disk" feature set to? You can check this by following steps 1 to 6 shown below.

To change that feature, please follow these steps and see if the problem persists;

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/140592-hard-drive-turn-off-hard-disk-after-idle-never.html

1. Click on the
   
   .
2. In the Search programs and files
   
   bar, type "Power plan", and click on Choose a power plan.
3. Click on Change plan settings from whichever power plan you are using.
4. In the menu, click on Change advanced power settings.
5. In the menu that will open, please double click on ➢Hard disk.
6. Click on ➢Turn off hard disk after.
7. You can change this setting to Never so that your hard disk will not turn off again when your computer goes to sleep.
8. After changing the option, click on Apply, and then click on OK.
9. Please reboot your machine after this.

Good luck and keep us posted,
Nommy

 

[x BlueRobot]

Just to add, different drivers and devices support different power states.

 

[bilvihur]

Remember this is a desktop, not running on a battery. The power plan is set to balanced. By definition: When a PC enters sleep mode, it saves electricity by shutting down most of its components. But it uses some power to keep Windows, running programs, and data in RAM, allowing it to wake up almost instantly. I want the HD to power down when the sleep cmd is executed. I just want the machine to wake up quickly.
How can I determine whether device drivers may be causing the problem? SLEEP behavior is variable even though I haven't changed any of them.

 

[x BlueRobot]

You can make the HDD power down further, but you can't choose which hardware components go to sleep, and which one's don't.

You could try Hybrid Sleep, it should be enabled by default for desktops, and uses the S4 and S3 power states, the processor will be turned off and a hibernation file will be created, but it will wake up much faster than a standard hibernation.

 

[bilvihur]

My Power Options - Sleep don't include Hybrid Sleep options.

 

[x BlueRobot]

They should, did select the Advanced Power Options?

1. Start rb:
2. Control Panel
3. Power Options (Small Icons view)
4. Change Plan Settings
5. Change Advanced Power Settings

 

[bilvihur]

Nope. All I see is Sleep After, and Allow Wake Timers.

 

[DavidE]

Do you have hibernate enabled?

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html

 

[bilvihur]

No, it wasn't. But I think we're getting away from the original problem, which is "Why doesn't the SLEEP command perform in a consistent manner?" That is, storing data in RAM, and allowing wake-up quickly.

 

[x BlueRobot]

It depends what settings you have enabled, and what do you define as slow?

I would enable the recommend settings for Sleep by reading this - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/778-power-plan-settings-change.html

This may also help - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/292971-pcie-link-state-power-management-turn-off-windows.html

Update your System Specifications with Speccy, and then copy this information into your System Specifications: Go to your UserCP, and then select Edit System Spec in the left pane. Copy the information from Speccy into the required fields. These System Specifications will then follow your every post.

 

[DavidE]

The reason I asked if you have hibernate enabled, is that if is not enabled, Hybrid sleep is not available (displayed).
Guess I should have made that clear when I asked the question.

The video driver can cause sleep problems.
You can try updating your video driver to see if that helps with this issue.
Sometimes even an older driver works better than a newer driver.

Here is a tutorial you can go through to see if anything in here helps find the cause of your issue.
Power Options and Sleep Mode Problems

Here is another tutorial (by cluberti) that may help.
If you do get a trace, you probably will need to ask cluberti to help with analyzing the trace results.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...up-shutdown-sleep-hibernate-reboot-trace.html

 

[bilvihur]

I'm using a corded mouse and keyboard, I updated my ATI Radeon HD 4200 display adapter, and it still takes 105 sec to wake up from SLEEP. I don't want to devote 6GB to an hiberfil.sys file on my "C" disk, so unless I can place it somewhere else, I guess I'll have to live with poor Wake-Up-From-SLEEP performance.

 

[DavidE]

The power light blinking indicates you are using S1 sleep state.
You could look in BIOS setup and see if you can change it to S3 sleep state.
I doubt that would fix your issue, but you never know...

If you tried all the suggestions given here and nothing helped, I'm not sure what else to suggest.
Did you try a trace and that did not help?

For Hibernate, the hiberfil.sys file must be on the root of the "C" drive, so you can't put it elsewhere.
The default size is 75% of RAM, but it can be lowered to 50%.

 

[bilvihur]

Much to my surprise (and delight), when I woke my machine up this morning, I immediately heard the click from the ext speaker, and the desktop appeared within 10 seconds! I had not rebooted after installing the video device driver, but DID reboot after running Malwarebytes and a defrag. Not sure what corrected the problem, or whether it will stay corrected, but thanking everyone for their help.

 

[x BlueRobot]

Glad to be able to help

 

[bilvihur]

I thought I had this issue put to SLEEP (pun), but now there's a new wrinkle. I've been putting the machine in SLEEP state every night and waking it up most mornings by pressing the power button. BUT, on some mornings I've found it already awake. This morning, as I put down the coffee cup, but before I pressed the power button, my cat jumped up on the desk, stepped on the keyboard, and the machine powered up! I want to keep the cat, but would only like the machine to wake up when I press the power button. Any suggestions?

 

[DavidE]

In Device Manager right click on the Keyboard device and click Properties.
In the Power Management tab uncheck "Allow this device to wake the computer".
You probably also want to set your Mouse this way.

 

[bilvihur]

That did it! Thanks.

 

[DavidE]

You're most welcome.
Glad to hear it's solved and thanks for posting back!