Computer enters sleep mode by itself

My Windows 10 computer enters sleep mode spontaneously from time to time. When I hit a key to start it up again, most of the time it barely gets to the login screen (unlock, not fresh start) and immediately goes back down again.

I suspect there may be a voltage or short problem somewhere. Is there a utility that monitors this? Wouldn't Windows record that it went into an emergency sleep mode for whatever reason?

Where would that log be?

If I hit F11 or F2, the bios setup and boot menu, it will stay on indefinitely, even if I am trapped in one of these sleep->sleep->sleep-> loops.

If I make sure Ethernet and the display cables are seated properly, hold in the power button for 10s to force reboot, go into boot menu to pick Windows Boot Menu, and pray, about 95% of the time it comes back and runs without autosleep for a few hours to a day. (It isn't a 7.1 speaker short because I have completely disconnected the speakers and it still occurs.)


Any ideas?

Not sure if this is the issue but...

If it is a desktop PC, check it is not monitoring the (non-existent) battery power as though it were a laptop. I found this enabled on an older desktop model after an earlier Win10 upgrade. I didn't have the symptoms you have, though.

Also, again if it is a desktop, try disabling "Sleep on idle" and "wake on traffic" mode for the wired network interface(s). Just have them on when the PC is running.

It sounds to me like it's really, really tired.

I assume you have Windows 10. Go to settings / System / Power and Sleep and check the setting of how long before it goes to sleep. Have you got this on one minute? LOL.

You have a laptop, don't you? Those things are *****.

Full desktop, not a laptop. A tower, actually.


Sleep timer: never Actually, this is under advanced settings, and it it is Sleep -> hibernate -> never. There is no sleep option!

Changed sleep button action to do nothing. Not holding out hope as I think I did this one before. Sleep is removed from power menu under start, but that doesn't mean the guts of it aren't active for something else to use.

Power button action (not power menu): shut down, not sleep



I figured out how to add "hibernate" to the menu (but my problem is sleep, the deep, write-to-disc suspend mode, not the keep-ram-alive fastest suspend mode). I removed sleep but think that's in the BIOS as I can't get it back, not that it matters in a menu.

With an SSD, by the way, sleep is utterly useless, if speed is your goal. It starts up from cold just as fast, and faster if you count turnaround time as writing the memory out takes over 30 seconds.


Unfortunately, I can find nothing in BIOS or Windows settings to either disable, or read a log of "emergency sleep shutdown for reason X". Is there even such a thing?

Beerina said:

Full desktop, not a laptop. A tower, actually.


Sleep timer: never Actually, this is under advanced settings, and it it is Sleep -> hibernate -> never. There is no sleep option!

Changed sleep button action to do nothing. Not holding out hope as I think I did this one before. Sleep is removed from power menu under start, but that doesn't mean the guts of it aren't active for something else to use.

Power button action (not power menu): shut down, not sleep



I figured out how to add "hibernate" to the menu (but my problem is sleep, the deep, write-to-disc suspend mode, not the keep-ram-alive fastest suspend mode). I removed sleep but think that's in the BIOS as I can't get it back, not that it matters in a menu.

With an SSD, by the way, sleep is utterly useless, if speed is your goal. It starts up from cold just as fast, and faster if you count turnaround time as writing the memory out takes over 30 seconds.


Unfortunately, I can find nothing in BIOS or Windows settings to either disable, or read a log of "emergency sleep shutdown for reason X". Is there even such a thing?

Click to expand...

Just to make sure: You are aware of the following:

sleep = keep-RAM-alive fastest suspend mode;

hibernate = deep, write-to-disk, least-energy using suspend mode.

It appears as if you have them mixed up. That's how Microsoft uses the terms.

ETA: Microsoft/Windows has a hybrid mode between the two specifically for desktop machines. It should be enabled by default on desktop machines, and disabled on laptops, but I wonder how it knows whether it runs on one or the other. I could imagine that an operator can mix up the settings as s/he chooses to do so, perhaps even unintentionally.

I seem to enter sleep mode spontaneously myself from time to time.

You mentioned wanting to look for logs. Have you tried the Windows Event logs in Event Viewer? If not, click on the Start button and type in eventvwr.msc and hit enter. It may take a few moments to build your log history, though probably not long with an SSD. From there, on the left side of the window that opened up, you should see several categories. The important one is the "Windows Logs" one. Expand that category.

If an important event is being logged here, it'll probably be under either the "Application" subcategory or the "System" one. There may be too many logs to look at though. You can filter these categories down by right-clicking on it (Applications for instance), clicking on "Filter Current Log", then checking the boxes for "Critical", "Warning", and "Error". Of course, filtering the log down to just those may skip over any log that might be important here if Windows thought its sleep event was a normal process. So filter at your own risk I guess.

It would be ideal to check the logs immediately after your computer does one of these sleep events. That way you don't have to filter at all and can just scroll down through the small amount of logs Windows generates upon booting up (and the few errors it throws in there when it has a sudden reboot which happens when you hold the power button down to shut it off).

Test

My "token has expired", causing this site to graciously delete my clumsily-thumbed response.

Why? (Bangs tree root with fist while lying injured and the rain pours down) Why?

Just a sec.

In Windows Logs -> System, I see information events of "the system is entering sleep" and related of the system has returned from a low power state, wake source unknown.

The entering sleep has "Sleep reason: Application API"

Is this some high level API or might some low level utility use it?

These correlate with the go to (hibernate?) incidents.

I reinstalled the OS and the only apps I installed myself were Chrome, Steam, and, through Steam, No Man'S Sky and Champions Online. Playing them does not stop or cause the hibernates as it happens without playing them.

As a stopgap, if anyone knows a way to blow away the stored hibernation and force a full boot when powering on, let me know. In Windows 7 I could get a menu that let me pick which to do, but that does not seem to be available with Windows 10.

No, holding in the power button until the system resets doesn't work, at least when I am in the quick re-hibernation loop of a few seconds.

Sorry for not replying back sooner. Real life gets me busy sometime.

It is weird that your BIOS doesn't have a way to turn off sleep mode. But it doesn't always work there anyways.

Based upon that event log though, it almost certainly has to be an app installed causing it. Do you have an Intel Power Management app installed maybe? If so, try uninstalling that.

Overheating can cause computers to go to sleep as well, though I think that creates a different event log (and would almost certainly happen while playing games like No Man's Sky so I highly doubt this is the issue).

Regarding your question about removing the hibernation data - the only way is to completely remove power from the computer. You have to unplug the machine from all power sources. Since it is a desktop, just pull the power cord and press the power button for a few seconds to drain the PSU of anything in there. If it was a laptop, you'd also need to remove the battery. That should clear the stored hibernation data.

Beerina said:

My Windows 10 computer enters sleep mode spontaneously from time to time.

Click to expand...

Spontaneous slumbustion?

Have you opened it up and checked the fans for fluff?

https://superuser.com/questions/484...-application-is-causing-the-computer-to-sleep

Though instead of msconfig I would suggest https://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx

If a temp monitor shuts the system down, it should log this. Where? Not in the logs mentioned, that's for sure, unless its that cryptic Application API reason. In which case, shame on the lousy engineer.




I tried a number of things to stop hibernation, but it was the final one here that works:

To also disable Hibernate mode (standby state S4) run powercfg.exe /hibernate off in an elevated command prompt:

Start > type Command Prompt > right click on Command Prompt and click Run as Administrator
Type powercfg.exe /hibernate off and press Enter


Still, it doesn't address why it was happening to begin with. So I make sure I shut down the computer when I'm not there in case it might burst into flames.


This is a statistical argument that it is solved (or the symptom stopped anyway) as it has worked for weeks before with no problem.

Microsoft provide shutdown and hibernate commands in the windows API. I remember one download manager offered that as an option "Shutdown when all downloads finished". I'd expect the culprit to be either a download manager/file transfer/torrent type tool or an application's auto-update tool.

Hmmm, I have never consciously installed a download manager, and I re-installed Windows 10 as a last resort, but that didn't stop it, either.

It is possible one of the games, which will auto-update whenever you start, or Steam, is doing this, but I have never told it to do this. Steam would seem to be the only possible culprit, but still wouldn't explain the sometimes immediately re-hibernating when waking up with just the briefest flash of the login screen. Unless it was still running and did it after every tiny but separate dl.