Win7 PC hibernating unexpectedly

[eglovesasailor]

Hi;

my PC is going into hibernate while I'm actually using it. Every day or two, for no reason that I can tell, at no particular time. I've looked at power options, nothing out of the ordinary there I think, and I've looked at the system logs but I don't really understand what I'm looking at.

Is there any way to tell which program or process is telling my comp to hibernate? I obviously need to give it a good talking to...

cheers in advance

Al

 

[GokAy]

Do you need hibernation? Try disabling it (even if you do) while troubleshooting and see if it will still do it.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html

 

[eglovesasailor]

Thanks GokAy for your reply.

I use hibernate every day, and every night when I run an autobackup. Disabling it would not be a solution even if it didn't happen again. All that will tell me is that it hasn't happened again, 'yet'. It won't tell me why it is happening. And while I'm waiting for that non-answer I won't be able to use hibernate. So I prefer not to disable it.

I'm sure the information about WHY it's happening is somewhere in the logs, but I don't know how to find that information.

Do you?

 

[UsernameIssues]

Open Event Viewer > Windows Logs > System

After the System log loads, use Ctrl-F to search for the term hibernate.

 

[eglovesasailor]

Thanks for the tip UNI, didn't think of that...

However, doing the search for 'hibernate' only had four hits, nothing more recent than 8 months ago. I use hibernate several times a day so you'd think there would be more.

I've just deliberately hibernated again to see what the log calls it and it says "The system is entering sleep. Sleep Reason: Application API"

I've also looked in the event viewer at my Syncback scheduled backup at 2am with it's -hibernate command at the end and it also says "Sleep Reason: Application API".

I then searched for 'sleep' but there are dozens of events each day, mostly with the event id 7036. So that doesn't help to pinpoint either the times I hibernate by choice, or the unexpected hibernations.

Then I searched for 'The system is entering sleep' looking for a sleep event where I'd immediately restarted the pc, but all I can see are the times I hibernated deliberately and the hibernation after my overnight scheduled backup has run. Can't spot any of the unexpected hibernations, but my eyes are starting to glaze over. I'll wait till it happens again and try to snare the log of that event. But I suspect when I do it will just say "Sleep Reason: Application API".

What does that mean, and how can I pinpoint which application it is referring to?

 

[UsernameIssues]

Sleep Reason: Application API probably means that some app called the Windows API (application program interface) to cause a sleep or hibernate event. If you happen to see the unexpected sleep/hibernate event in the System log, take note of the time and look in the Application log around that same time.

Do you have a UPS on this computer? Maybe it puts the computer into hibernation.

 

[eglovesasailor]

Thanks, if/when it happens again I'll catch the system log and also cross-check the application log.

No UPS.