PC sleeps after about 1 1/2 hours but changed settings are ignored

xwray · 20 May 2020

Running Win 10 version 1909

I'm reasonably certain I have tried every resolution Google coughed up without success. While the issue is a minor one it is very annoying. I'm hoping someone here might be able to suggest a fix that works. The problem first appeared about 4 months ago and up to that point was working fine. I think it might have had something to do with a failed cumulative update but cant be sure.

My PC will sleep after about 1 1/2 hour no matter what the delay time is set to. I can set a different delay time and the new time is displayed on the screen as having been set but the new setting is ignored.

The monitor sleep settings work fine and the monitor turns off at the appropriate time.

Any help will be appreciated.

dalchina · 22 May 2020

Hi, to confirm your PC went to sleep, see your Event Viewer

event viewer (eventvwr from the command line)
event ID 42 in System log from source Kernel-Power as the sleeping event

Is hibernation enabled? Try this:
Press Windows + X, and select the option

Control Panel.
Click on the Power Options icon.
Click on Change Plan Settings
Click on Change advanced power settings.
Expand Sleep, expand Hibernate After, set to 0 minutes

Check scheduled tasks:

Type task scheduler on the search bar.
Click on Task Scheduler.
Under Actions, click on Display All Running Tasks.
Once All Running Tasks pops up, look for one that schedules a sleep event.
Disable the task (temporarily) and see if your PC still sleeps.

Unfortunately a diagnostic sleep study does not indicate the source usefully:

PC sleeps after about 1 1/2 hours but changed settings are ignored-1.png

You could also try using the 'Restore plan defaults' option for each power plan.

Sometimes a screen saver might do this- make sure you choose 'none' for test purposes.

Sometimes a 3rd party theme might be responsible - choose the default theme for test purposes.

xwray · 23 May 2020

Hi Dalchina

It looks like I didn't do a good job of explaining my problem. It is not one of the PC going into unwanted sleep but rather that it WON'T go to sleep when I want it to; i,e., I set the sleep timer to go to sleep after 10 minutes of idle time but it either won't go to sleep at all or sometimes it WILL go to sleep after about 1 1/2 hours.

I believe this behavior started about the time a failed cumulative update occurred but can't be certain.

- - - Updated - - -

in case anyone is interested...

Well, I finally broke down and performed an in-place repair, something I have never done before because quite frankly, I didn't trust it to not bust my system in subtle ways if not outright smokin' it.

But, it worked perfectly and and indeed fixed the sleep problem as well as a couple other minor annoyances to boot.

I'm now a believer...

dalchina · 24 May 2020

Good news.. now consolidate what you have by
a. scheduling a daily (e.g.) system restore point (Tutorial available) - yes- SR may or may fail to complete restoring, but when it works, it's great- in one case recently, a failed SR restore fixed an issue.
b. Starting a new disk imaging set- e.g. Macrium Reflect (free-paid) to large enough external storage.
- thus you are potentially protected against
fire/theft/flood/ransomware/virus/unbootable PC/failed disk(s) etc - and have a full backup.