Windows 8.1 Won't Sleep When Idle

Ever since I upgraded to the Windows 8.1 beta (and even now with the Windows 8.1 RTM), my computer will not idle to sleep. This wouldn't be that much of a problem since I almost always remember to put it to sleep before walking away. But sometimes the computer will wake on its own through a scheduled task, and then the computer will stay on until I return to it. (By the way, I'd rather not disable scheduled tasks from being able to wake the machine.)

The computer is set to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity. I have set the Power Option "When sharing media" to "Allow the computer to sleep." I have deactivated all "wake_armed" devices so that

powercfg /devicequery wake_armed

returns

NONE

I have installed all the drivers Windows couldn't automatically detect (of which there was only my "Creative Game Port"). Finally, I have generated a report from

powercfg /energy duration 3600

Originally, it informed me of a few problems, such as the "When sharing media..." setting. As I said earlier, I have now set the "When sharing media" setting to "Allow the computer to sleep." Here is the report, which seems to suggest that I have no further serious problems:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=3D3292D8A7DEC2F4!17449&authkey=!AIllZ4c3A8_-XHU

SkyDrive will probably show the HTML upon clicking above. Try clicking Download and then opening the file. Thank you for your help.

user1325179

Posted 2013-09-09T13:32:45.037

Reputation: 285

I am also having this problem but the solution below did not work. Should I start a new question or somehow add that here? – josefec – 2013-12-26T14:25:40.630

Answers

The answer was to leave the Homegroup (which I wasn't using anyway)! I started a thread in the Neowin.net Forums, and thanks to Kool Box for figuring it out:

http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1176793-windows-81-wont-sleep-when-idle/

user1325179

Posted 2013-09-09T13:32:45.037

Reputation: 285

That worked for me too. Wonder why that prevents sleeping? – Sean Kearon – 2013-10-02T06:53:02.400

See here, I figured it out finally for my issues: Win 8.1 not going to sleep

I used an option (/WAKETIMERS) which I had not seen too often before on any helping forum, thus I'm posting it here:

powercfg /WAKETIMERS

-> To see the scheduled tasks. Helped me figure out to disable the Windows regular maintenance, which avoided sleeping completely (and not only waking it up in the night).

tim

Posted 2013-09-09T13:32:45.037

Reputation: 302

I had the same problem, but I did not have Homegroup activated at all.

The solution that worked for me was to turn off Play a slide show on the lock screen in the Lock Screen settings:

enter image description here

Klas Mellbourn

Posted 2013-09-09T13:32:45.037

Reputation: 1 601

This setting was off by default for me. – user1325179 – 2013-11-01T00:32:45.023

For me it was he "S4 sleep mode" in american megatrend Bios. After disabling the S4 mode, windows 8.1 could successfully sleep after remaining idle.

wmac

Posted 2013-09-09T13:32:45.037

Reputation: 1 047