Fix "Sleep Mode Randomly Waking Up" Issue in Windows Vista
I’ve been having a very frustrating issue with Windows Vista on my HP notebook: I put the computer into sleep mode, close the lid, and then unplug the network cable… and the computer wakes back up, typically when it’s already safely in my laptop bag, so I don’t notice until I get to my destination and the battery is nearly dead.
Turns out there’s a very easy fix for this problem: Disable the Wake on LAN feature. Essentially, the computer is set to automatically wake up from network traffic, which seems to include pulling out the cable.
To change this setting, type in Device Manager into the start menu search box, and then browse down to “Network Adapters” and find your network adapter. In this case, mine is ”Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet”.
Right-click it and choose Properties from the menu. In the resulting dialog, choose the Power Management tab.
Uncheck the box next to “Allow this device to wake the computer” to solve the problem. You’ll notice that there’s a warning about having the option enabled in the first place.
Hat tip to commenter Sean for this one
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This is also a problem with USB devices, mainly keyboards and mice. I found that if I tried to put my machine to sleep, it would go through the motions, then immediately wake back up. I discovered that setting the keyboard and mouse to not wake up the computer in the device manager was the solution.
Just thought you’d like to know.
I also found that if there is a setting for wake-on-lan under the advanced tab of the network device, Vista will obey it even if the box is unchecked on the power management tab. I had the issue of random wakeups and pulling the network cable fixed it so I knew it was a wake-on-lan setting somewhere.
But what if you want your computer to go to sleep when it’s not being used. But it has some network shares (media stuff) that will require to wake when it detects network activity. I’ve been dealing with this problem for a while. I have a computer with all my movies and music… and I configure it to go to sleep… but it keeps waking up because of this LAN setting… but I need it to wake up when I actually need it to… not when it detects that it’s connectd to a network
I have the exact same problem as Ben: I do not want to turn off wake-on LAN as I need my xbox360 to awake the PC when I want to run MediaCenter to watch recorded tv shows on my TV or whatever.
Now my PC is on all the time, night and day but that doesnt make sense at all. When not active it should go into sleep until a user or the network wakes it up. Now it will never go to sleep as it detects the network traffic.
Ive been looking all over the web to find a solution for this but havent found one. Many people must have this issue?
I am having this problem on my desktop, except it doesn’t wake up randomly. It wakes up EXACTLY at 9:00 every single morning even when I am nowhere near the computer. I don’t want my computer to wake up without me telling it to. I don’t think the problem is with wake-on-LAN though.
I have a problem with my computer. I clicked on sleep mode and it turned off, but when I tried to wake it up after about 5 -7 minutes, it gave me a sign that said “No signal …..”something.” I don’t know how to fix it, and the main box thingie I have no idea what it is called but it has the motherboard and chips inside it. That thing makes a noise like a fan is inside it. is that normal? And how do I solve this problem? How do I wake my computer up? Does anyone know? Please help!!!
Luke,
My computer has the exact same problem! At 6am every morning it wakes up and i cannot find out why – its driving me mad! This even happens with all networking devices disabled.. Nowhere on the internet has the answer
If your PC wakes up at the exact same time every day then you either have the BIOS set to wake the computer at that time or you have a task scheduled that is allowed to wake the PC.
BIOS has no alarm settings enabled and i have made sure nothing in task scheduler has permissions to turn the computer on.. .
OH and this morning it woke up at 6.55am instead of 6am? This is my only problem with Vista, but its a biggy.
For those that stumble across this in the future, firefox seems to have been the problem.. swapping to IE seems to have stopped that startup problems?!
I’ll tell all of you how to fix all your problems so everything works as it is suppose to. I had the same issues, I need and use WOL all the time, but I want it to come on only when I send a signal from a remote computer, or when my Media Center PC needs to come on to record a show.
I have a solution to this problem & this is what I did:
Find your Windows Vista disk, then toss it in the trash. Wipe your entire C:\ partition & cleanly install Windows XP Media Center.
That’s what I did and now everything works as it was meant to. The computer is WAY WAY faster too. Especially after some registry tweaking, cleaning & streamlining with Xteq setup.
Wow, that was really helpful.
Ta, Sean,
Been trying to stop my Vista from waking up for days….you’re the first person who knew what to do…
And it’s September, so Vista’s been out a long time now!!
Seems installing a new mouse in Vista also enables the “feature” of “allow this device to wake-up computer”. Thus, putting Vista into SLEEP mode, then unplugging the mouse or in my case, turning off the wireless mouse causes the PC to wake-up. Had to disable this as well.
Just so you know, I’ve have had this issue after the newest bios update, sending it into HP (They said it was a software issue) and going from XP MCE to Vista. The machine still wakes up… NO idea what to do. Checked everything you guys are checking out and still have the issue. Any more ideas would be greatly appreciated for us all. Thanks.
Very frustrating, isn’t it. You may want to step down through EVERY device in DEVICE MANAGER and uncheck the “allow this device to wake-up computer”.
Sleep mode worked on my HP desktop w/Award BIOS following the above instructions, but it lost the network settings and required a reboot to get them back.
I’ve gotten the sleep mode to work properly and retain the network settings by leaving the “Allow this device to wake the computer” checked. And, checking the box for the line under it that reads, “Only allow management stations to wake the computer”.
Hi Guys,
You might also check the Internet Time Synchronization feature. This can also wake up a vista computer from sleep every day at a certain time. Just uncheck the box in Internet Time and test it. You can also check this by reading the Event Viewer to see at what time the computer is being woken up and what is waking it up from it’s dreams
Hope it helps !
Cheers,
Saïd
Hiya,
I have found one more thing involved in this conundrum. It’s a motherboard jumper.
I was able to stop Vista waking up with the usual “power management” tab unchecking and wake-on-lan disabling. Several months later, I was leafing through my motherboard manual (as you do…) and read about a jumper allowing “USB Device Wake-Up”. Turns out it was off by default. I set the jumper to on and hey presto, Vista stays asleep but I can still use the keyboard to wake it up!
My motherboard (Asus P5B-E) has one jumper for each set of USB ports, plus one for PS/2. I went over to a friend and her Asus has only one jumper for everything. But it works for her too. And the jumper was the only way to fix her Vista insomnia!
Very happy now.
I had to unclick “Allow this device to wake the computer” from my mouse and keyboard as well, but she sleeps now.
Can anybody help me???? My computer went into sleep mode and now will not turn on it is in a constant sleep mode , there’s nothing on the screen but the computers fan is whirring away happily……..please help me I need to get on this computer to do my accounts for the year end!!!!!!!!
Sam,
If your computers fan is running the computer is not in sleep…
In my Device Manager settings, there is “allow this device to wake” settings for my keyboard or mouse. In fact, the only time those settings are available is in the network adapters, and they are unchecked. This only started happening to me about a week ago. I have been to countless forums with advice on what to do and nothing is working. I tell the computer to sleep and it never goes to sleep – the screen turns black for 3-4 seconds, then comes back on.
I meant to say there ISN’T the ability to check or uncheck that box, because it does not show up in my keyboard or mouse settings. I have tried everything listed on a dozen forums and nothing works.
Seth, Have you tried checking the Bios settings. I know on mine there is an option for waking on lan there. Was the mouse and keyboard that scuppered me though.
try to run the powercfg -?
You can see which devices can wake your pc
You can see which device woke your system last – if that is the RTC check the task scheduler and event viewer to see which event was the first that happened after system woke up, or as mentioned above the time synch.
it’s a great tool for troubleshooting sleep problems
PS! A sleeping PC in sleep mode S1 will normally have the fan running, sleep mode S3 or more the fan is off.
Thanks guys – this is the only place on the net where I finally found an answer after days of searching. My Vista trial box kept resuming from sleep immediately after putting it to sleep – due to USB mouse & keyboard. Grr. Things which should just work don’t.
Thank you so much!!! You ARE a Genius!!
Hi.
Thanks.!!
This was great and fixed trhe problem!!!
thankyou
c ya
If you have IR on mediacenter that can wake it up. As someone else stated if you run cmd prompt and type powercfg -devicequery wake_armed. this will tell you all devices with power management properties. then go into device manager and disable wake up there.
thanks! that worked.
it works!
Used Sean’s help and for about 1/2 hour the machine is still sleeping. However, I noticed that I have two network adapters one of which is for the wireless feature I have for the desktop (which I never use although I do have a router for my wireless laptop) so I disabled that one as well as the Intel adapter. I thought I had disabled these features a long time ago, but just recalled that in trying to install Vista SP 1 recently, the computer crashed and I had to go back to factory settings. This apparently reset the features to “on” and started a host of strange happenings like this one ever since. Isn’t Microsoft a great company!!
Thanks very much Sean and all the rest of you who provided input.
ALbee
A few weeks ago my new HP desktop with Vista started waking up randomly and I was at a loss on how to correct this problem. Being computer literate(with help from HP support) I finally went to Device Manager and disabled the following devices from waking my PC up: Keyboard, Modem & Network devices. I left the Mouse as the only device that could wake it up. It worked. As a footnote I read practically every Google article about this universal problem.
By the way has anyone had any problems installing SP1 on Vista ? I installed it and it downloaded a completely new version of Vista wiping out all my user files. I was sure glad I had Carbonite backup installed because every user file was restored.
Sam … if you never found the solution to your problem (which I hope you have by now). The could be the button that automatically sends your computer into sleep mode when it is closed. If that button is physically stuck in (I had this happen with my old Dell laptop) then the computer can still be “woken up” by pressing the power button (which you would press because you think it is off) but the screen REMAINS black. Everything else will turn on except the monitor it seems. As soon as you unstick this button everything will start working again.
This may not be your problem … but it after many frustrated months of this myself I finally figured it out.
ONE MORE SOLUTION:
I found out that my computer was set to update its time using internet. Its called Internet Time Synchronization. Disable it, and your computer will enjoy a good sleep.
Right-click on the clock ->
Go to Internet Time tab ->
Change Settings ->
Uncheck “Synchronize with an internet time server”
Checking the event viewer was really helpful, I found my PC was trying to renew its IP at the same time every day, so I hope by extending the lease on my IP to a week on my router, and setting a scheduled task to run every day to execute a batch file to renew the IP, I hope this will fix it
Go to network adapter advanced setting and choose only Magic Packet as option, how to wake up computer. There is also Pattern Match option enabled by default that causes problems.
Sorry guys – still a bit confused.
1) I don’t have Power Management option on my keyboard devices.
2) I do have Power Management on my network device (Intel Pro/100) but the “Allow this device to wake the computer” option is greyed out.
Great guide! Alas, Vista x64 still wakes up on me. I made sure no devices were set to wake it up (powercfg -devicequery wake_armed turns up empty) and I can’t tell what wakes it up (powercfg -lastwake says “Wake History Count – 0″). I unplugged the network, keyboard and mouse, still nothing — it wakes us as soon as it goes to sleep. Any other ideas are welcome.
Not sure if someone’s already mentioned it but the computer can also be woken up by the Vista Media Center TV Pack 2008 guide service. It is set up to automtically download the guide every day and to wake up the pc to do so. In my case, it was doing it every day at 6:02 am. I took away it’s authorization to wake up the computer and it’s all good now.
Check if the disk defragmentation is scheduled to run automatically. My HP laptop had it scheduled for 2 am everyday and was waking from sleep every night.
Why, oh why doesn’t Windows have a feature whereby the Power Management control panel simply tells you what device woke up the computer? Then it would not be necessary to spend hours playing a guessing game and fiddling around with Device Manager settings?
My computer always wakes up a couple of seconds after going to sleep. I have mucked around for hours trying to fix this. Why can’t the computer just tell me what is waking it up?
I have now discovered that there is a command-line utility in Windows that purports to give the source of the most recent wake-up. It is
powercfg -lastwake
Unfortunately, when I run it, the output is:
Wake History Count – 1
Wake History [0]
Wake Source Count – 0
This doesn’t really give me much insight into what woke up the computer.
Non of the above helped. Discovered an entry in the evenvwr that states that a recording did not take place due to a change made by the tv station.
Issue solved. It was the program guide. To check the time and to set a better time you can use this tool: http://www.avsoft.nl/Tools/guidedltime/
Here is one Solution that worked for me, after several Months of tweaking around VISTA, my PC would not go into SleepMode..
Go to the Power Option Setting and click “Change Plan Settings” then go to “Change Advance Settings” scroll to Multimedia Settings (open the link till you see Sharing Media, change it to “Allow Computer to Sleep”
Et Voila!
Hope this works for many of you.
Hello guys I ve tried lots of ways to fix my computer shut down problem(when i try to shut down it resets:S )
Anyway I thought I fixed it by unchecking wake up on lan at device manager It worked greatly for 2 days then today its just happen again it didnt shutdown
what can i do ?
I cant use “Run” because it says This task will be created with administrave privileges
I have the opposite problem from that discussed here. When I close the lid on my laptop, it turns the unit off no matter what setting I have chosen in the Power Options Properties Power Scheme settings are not retained. Pressing the lid switch puts the unit in standby.
Hi guys,
For me it was Windows Update, AV update, USB mouse and finally the network adapter
It’s just great, the wake on LAN feature was disabled in BIOS, but this setting in device manager seem not to care about it!!!
I’ve bookmarked this page, never know what else could it be. Wake-ups in the middle of the night, wake-ups immediately after pressing sleep button, a few of wake-ups while carried in a bag: so nice to take it out and see that its on and crushed because of overheat
One of the problems is that actually any program can schedule a wake-up and you will have to spend hours hunting it down as it normally is not visible in the event viewer (in one of the forums it was a mouse driver automatic update). I would appreciate if there was a way to disable all and any automatic wake-ups for a laptop
Also in Windows XP x64 powercfg does not have those options to monitor device wake-ups
Thank you soooooooooooo much!!! =)
Thank you for sharing your wonderful and helpful information, kudos! it worked!
This site helped me with my problem of Vista sleep
mode turning back on after awhile. Very frustating,
til I finally found my solution here. Thank you Sean,
and ‘the How to Geek’. Jeff
Hi,
I too had this problem. As I just solved it, I’d like to share my solution with you.
My Vista desktop started awaking from hibernation after 2 minutes. This all started 2 days ago. Before I had to problems with it.
After googling around, I saw a post from someone suspecting VMWare. Thats when I remembered I had installed VMWare Converter….. 2 days ago!
I uninstalled it and…. my wakeup troubles are over.
Rob.
a solution i found was very useful.
in power options > choose when the computer sleeps > then theres an option called change advanced power options > in here there are many options to choose from which may fix alot of problems that people may have, when installing programs or giving a certain program permissions sometimes changes settings in the advanced power settings.
for me once connecting my xbox360 and setting up the extender and all that rubbish, changed a setting in there not allowing my computer to sleep….it just woke back up after 3secs.
hope this helps
THANK YOU! I got a new HP Pavilion and its great but it had the same problem! Even though its a desktop and doesen’t use a battery, it’s annoying to have it wake up from sleep like when I go out to dinner or something and don’t wanna shut it completly down. I don’t get why they made that option enabled to begin with though!
I have the same problem as most people here.
My computer pops back on a couple of seconds after I try to put it in sleep mode.
Have tried everything.
the WOL, the usb devices, mouse, keyboard, unplugging all my usb and firewire devices, loads of other stuff I already forgot.
But it keeps doing it.
This is so depressing…