How to keep Windows 7 from sleeping while scanning the PC

So, I've been using Microsoft Security Essentials lately. And it usually takes a couple hours or more for it to full scan my hard drive. Because of that, I commonly leave it scanning while I go do something else. Problem is: 10 minutes later, windows 7 goes to sleep, and the scan is (obviously) paused. That's What I'd like to stop happening.

So far, the only way I've been able to avoid it was to create a power plan, and switch to it while away, to keep the PC from sleeping. Problem is that I have to keep switching power plans and I'd like the PC to be able to go to sleep in case MSE finishes scanning and I'm still not back.

Maybe I'm just asking for too much, but I've been surprised by the users here plenty of times already. So let me know if you know how to keep the PC from sleeping while MSE is scanning.

Thanks

Malabarba

Posted 2009-12-15T21:58:46.950

Reputation: 7 588

1+1. Was just about to create an identical Q! Too bad there isn't an option called 'Prevent sleep during manual scan' in MSE. – Andreas Rejbrand – 2013-03-08T14:33:15.530

Answers

The perfect solution would be if MSE could run some custom commands when it starts and some others after it finish, like it’s explained here for O&O.

But something tells me that it isn’t near that smart, so you might be able to make it smart by using the EventGhost’s Task Create/Switch Events plugin and combine the knowledge of powercfg command from previous post you could make it work.

Saxtus

Posted 2009-12-15T21:58:46.950

Reputation: 1 254

Thanks for the link to EventGhost, it looks very useful. A while back, I tried Hotkey Master for macro/automation and it was very promising, but it hasn’t been updated in a long time and is obviously no longer supported, so its limitations and bugs make it impractical. I generally use AutoHotkey now, but using a simple event⇨action program like EventGhost is still desirable. – Synetech – 2013-08-31T04:36:09.997

Insomnia is a free tool that prevent a machine from going to sleep

fluxtendu

Posted 2009-12-15T21:58:46.950

Reputation: 6 701

1You have to manually close the window, so it’s not very helpful if you want to start a scan and go to bed and expect Windows to go to sleep on its own. – Synetech – 2013-08-31T04:28:49.410

have you tried keeping the scanning window maximized and not minimized/resized if not already?

I noticed that when watching movies not in fuill screen, it goes to sleep but if i go fullscreen, does not go to sleep. Funny thing is when the movie ends, it goes to sleep right away...

seems dumb suggestion, but perhaps it works the same way?

Jeivier

Posted 2009-12-15T21:58:46.950

Reputation: 168

1I noticed that when watching movies not in fuill screen, it goes to sleep but if i go fullscreen, does not go to sleep. Funny thing is when the movie ends, it goes to sleep right away... That’s just quirks of your media-player. A program has to call a specific function to disable power-management; the window state of a program has no bearing on whether Windows will sleep or not, at least not as far as Windows is concerned, a program could alter power-management based on its state if it wants (though that’s rare). – Synetech – 2013-08-31T04:28:01.500

I noticed that when µTorrent is running, Windows never goes to sleep.

So whenever I scan my PC, I simply open µTorrent.

mid

Posted 2009-12-15T21:58:46.950

Reputation: 1

1That’s only because you happen to have active torrents and µTorrent set to prevent standby while torrents are active. If others have changed that setting or have no active torrents, then it won’t help. Of course you could create a dead torrent that will never finish, but they specifically asked for the block to be temporary and to let it sleep once the scan is finished. You could also try to run a torrent hat is expected to finish a little bit after the scan is done, but there is no practical way to set such a thing up to be anywhere close to reliable. – Synetech – 2013-08-31T04:10:05.330

you have to use the windows task scheduler to wake the computer to do a scan. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/forum/mse-protect_start/running-mse-full-scan-as-a-scheduled-task/f627f5ce-0b74-4b1d-be64-d6ceeb4d9b02

Krista

Posted 2009-12-15T21:58:46.950

Reputation: 1

2It really would help to give more details to how, and why it would work. – Journeyman Geek – 2013-08-31T04:25:15.680

Just a thought, but perhaps setting the priority higher through task manager (or other means) would help.

alt text

outsideblasts

Posted 2009-12-15T21:58:46.950

Reputation: 6 297

How would that help? Are you assuming that they’ve got a bunch of other things running in the background, consuming CPU cycles? Even if for some reason that were true, it still wouldn’t guarantee that the scan finishes before the sleep timeout. – Synetech – 2013-08-31T04:14:31.547