{"id":708,"date":"2018-09-26T19:20:47","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T09:20:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/?p=708"},"modified":"2018-10-05T11:21:31","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T01:21:31","slug":"windows-10-wont-sleep-the-powercfg-command-can-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/2018\/09\/26\/windows-10-wont-sleep-the-powercfg-command-can-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows 10 won&#8217;t sleep! The powercfg command can help"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My Windows 10 desktop used to go to sleep as expected. My basic power settings show a &#8216;balanced&#8217; power plan, with the following settings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>turn off the display: 10 minutes<\/li>\n<li>put the computer to sleep: 30 minutes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Pretty standard power settings.<\/p>\n<p>However, lately I walk into my study after hours of inactivity and see the PC still powered on. It shouldn&#8217;t be. It should be sleeping after the pre-configured time of PC inactivity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The first thing to check:<\/strong> One of the &#8216;usual culprits&#8217; that has traditionally prevented my PCs from sleeping over the years has been &#8216;when sharing media, prevent idling to sleep&#8217; power setting. This setting can be found within the &#8216;advanced settings&#8217; of your power options. It should be set to &#8216;allow the computer to sleep&#8217;.\u00a0The example below shows the setting on another of my PCs (my media center PC) which runs 24\/7.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-711\" src=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power02.png\" alt=\"what is preventing my computer from sleeping\" width=\"397\" height=\"493\" srcset=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power02.png 684w, http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power02-242x300.png 242w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 397px) 100vw, 397px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The multimedia power setting was already correctly set to allow my computer to sleep, but my PC still failed to sleep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The second thing to check:<\/strong> The device manager allows for the power management of individual components. Most (if not all) configurable components need to be set to &#8216;Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power&#8217;. The example below shows the settings for my network interface card (NIC).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-714 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power04.png\" alt=\"what is preventing my computer from sleeping\" width=\"397\" height=\"470\" srcset=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power04.png 397w, http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power04-253x300.png 253w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 397px) 100vw, 397px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>On my PC, the &#8216;Allow the computer to sleep&#8217; setting was checked, yet my computer still failed to sleep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The third and final check (in my case):<\/strong> Open an elevated command prompt (right-click a command prompt shortcut, and click &#8216;run as administrator&#8217;).<\/p>\n<p>Now run the &#8216;powercfg -requests&#8217; command. This will show all of the different components that are preventing the PC from sleeping. In my case, I had the print spooler claiming to be &#8216;printing a document&#8217;. However, when I opened the &#8216;printers&#8217; section of control panel, no jobs were queued.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-710 size-large\" src=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power01-1024x573.png\" alt=\"what is preventing my computer from sleeping\" width=\"640\" height=\"358\" srcset=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power01-1024x573.png 1024w, http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power01-300x168.png 300w, http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power01-768x430.png 768w, http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power01.png 1590w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>My problem was that I had corrupt files clogging the print spooler, and preventing my PC from sleeping. I had to stop the &#8216;print spooler&#8217; service, navigate to c:\\windows\\system32\\spool\\printers and then delete all of the corrupt queued print jobs. I then rebooted the PC.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-712\" src=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power03-1024x468.png\" alt=\"what is preventing my computer from sleeping\" width=\"640\" height=\"293\" srcset=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power03-1024x468.png 1024w, http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power03-300x137.png 300w, http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power03-768x351.png 768w, http:\/\/iblogit.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/power03.png 1338w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After the PC restart, I re-ran the &#8216;powercfg -requests&#8217; command. There were no further impediments for the desktop to sleep. And after 30 minutes of inactivity, it went to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>I hope these problem solving steps help you in determining why your PC is not sleeping.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any suggestions, please share, and I&#8217;ll update the post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Windows 10 desktop used to go to sleep as expected. My basic power settings show a &#8216;balanced&#8217; power plan, with the following settings: turn off the display: 10 minutes put the computer to sleep: 30 minutes Pretty standard power settings. However, lately I walk into my study after hours of inactivity and see the<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"readmore\" href=\"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/2018\/09\/26\/windows-10-wont-sleep-the-powercfg-command-can-help\/\"><span class=\"arrow-right icon\"><\/span>Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[191,194,190,195,189,188,192,193],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":725,"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/725"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iblogit.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}