MoUsoCoreWorker blocking sleep

In the last month or so I have noticed that my Win10 desktop system will not go to sleep, even though all the power options are set correctly. I checked around and found that "powercfg -requests" would show me if a program was blocking sleep and it shows MoUsoCoreWorker.exe as being the culprit. That means the issue is related to the Update Orchestrator Service, ie. Windows Update.

Two things I do not understand; 1) why this started to happen all of a sudden, and 2) why my Win10 laptop does not have the same problem even though both are configured for power and sleep the same way ? Given they both are the same Windows build, I have no answer for Q1, but for Q2, if it is a Home vs Pro difference I find it strange, but not surprising. And BTW, powercfg on my Laptop Home system does NOT show MoUsoCoreWorker as blocking sleep.

Either way, I do not especially want to disable Windows Update on my Desktop, but I need my system to sleep. I have Allow wake timers Disabled on both systems, so does anyone have any idea what else could be going on ? And I checked the Windows Update tab in the Group Editor and All the entries show "Not Configured", which I assume is correct.

Help, my system is really tired and wants to Sleep
Jack


Edition Windows 10 Pro (Laptop is same version/build but Home)
Version 21H2
Installed on ‎1/‎17/‎2021
OS build 19044.2486
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.4190.0

Just some easy solutions for a start...

Attachment 384488

Your system may fail to sleep due to MoUsoCoreWorker.exe if you have not updated the Windows of your system to the latest build. Moreover, corrupt/misconfigured power settings or conflicting third-party applications may also cause the error under discussion.

Try do disable wake-up..(look at pic)

Is your Windows updated?

Conflicting third-party applications.......you could try to figure what app or program you installed approx. at the same time as the problem did occur.
Also look at the EventLog if there is any error that could help identifying that app. And use the Troubleshooters too.

I occasionally still have mousocoreworker.exe blocking my system from sleeping, so I disabled the Update Orchestrator Service. Of course this means Windows Update will not longer work, but I'm okay with that, as I didn't want it do automatic update anyway.
Before I did that though I check Windows Update and the only available update was an optional one, which did not get automatically downloaded. Kind of silly to have a service run a "worker" process that never ends, especially if it blocks sleep because of an optional update.

I do not know what triggers it, nor why some machines are affected and other not, but the solution can be found in this thread, back in Dec '20. I still have the override in place, updates still happen, and sleep works fine.

NB One has to reboot for the override to take effect.

The problem has been around a while - I found this ref in one of our ancestors, dated 2013: Power Availability Requests - Manage in Windows , where the Execution request is identified, and the method of removing it. Plus ca change!

I will try using "powercfg /REQUESTOVERRIDE and see if it works, as in my case it is easy to test. However, I am pretty sure that if I set the override and restart the system I will need to reset it, which would normally be a pain. But I already have a scheduled batch file that runs during start up, so I can add it to that.
The other thing I do not understand is why this issue only occurs on one of my systems ? I have 3 systems running Win10 and they are all configured the same way, but my desktop is the only one with this issue. Strange, but then again, this is Windows.