Monitor Refuses To Sleep

[John McGaw]

New install of W7 Ultimate on a freshly-built Shuttle SX58-H7, i7-920, 6GB
triple channel, Radeon HD5770, Patriot Torqx SSD system drive, WD 2tB green
drive for data, old trusty ViewSonic 20" LCD. Latest video (and all the
rest too) drivers installed. Everything works beautifully except that the
blasted monitor refuses to go to sleep and I'm too lazy (and forgetful) to
turn it off manually more than occasionally.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I've looked around but haven't turned up
anything. Searches on MS's site are hopeless unless I know ahead of time
exactly what terminology the KB writer was thinking of at the time (and
sometimes not even then). What is it that Windows monitors to see if a
computer is "idle"? Keyboard, mouse, something else?

 

[LouB]

New install of W7 Ultimate on a freshly-built Shuttle SX58-H7, i7-920,
6GB triple channel, Radeon HD5770, Patriot Torqx SSD system drive, WD
2tB green drive for data, old trusty ViewSonic 20" LCD. Latest video
(and all the rest too) drivers installed. Everything works beautifully
except that the blasted monitor refuses to go to sleep and I'm too lazy
(and forgetful) to turn it off manually more than occasionally.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? I've looked around but haven't turned
up anything. Searches on MS's site are hopeless unless I know ahead of
time exactly what terminology the KB writer was thinking of at the time
(and sometimes not even then). What is it that Windows monitors to see
if a computer is "idle"? Keyboard, mouse, something else?

Asked viewsonic folks?

 

[John McGaw]

Asked viewsonic folks?

The monitor is several years old and has always slept when connected to its
original XP machine. I have to figure that it hasn't forgot how as long as
the new system is forcing it into sleep in the same way that has been
standard seemingly forever. I guess I can check with ViewSonic but don't
hold out any hope there.

 

[Seth]

The monitor is several years old and has always slept when connected to
its original XP machine. I have to figure that it hasn't forgot how as
long as the new system is forcing it into sleep in the same way that has
been standard seemingly forever. I guess I can check with ViewSonic but
don't hold out any hope there.

They may have a proper monitor profile file to install in Windows.

 

[John McGaw]

They may have a proper monitor profile file to install in Windows.

Windows knows about the monitor and identifies it correctly. No problem there.

 

[MJMIII]

Windows knows about the monitor and identifies it correctly. No problem
there.

You're missing his point. Windows will correctly identify an HP printer,
but that doesn't mean all its functions will work. Go to ViewSonic's site
and see if they have Windows 7 drivers for your monitor.

 

[John McGaw]

You're missing his point. Windows will correctly identify an HP printer,
but that doesn't mean all its functions will work. Go to ViewSonic's
site and see if they have Windows 7 drivers for your monitor.

W7 comes with a full set of ViewSonic drivers (same as the Vista Drivers)
and had properly installed the correct one during OS installation. But just
to be sure I went to ViewSonic, downloaded the 64-bit drivers, extracted
them, and installed them. What I wound up was exactly the same driver
version as I had previously so no joy there.

 

[SC Tom]

W7 comes with a full set of ViewSonic drivers (same as the Vista Drivers)
and had properly installed the correct one during OS installation. But
just to be sure I went to ViewSonic, downloaded the 64-bit drivers,
extracted them, and installed them. What I wound up was exactly the same
driver version as I had previously so no joy there.

I hate to ask the obvious, but have you checked your Power Options settings?
There are a couple of different places to turn the display off- the
"Standard" settings, and a few more under "Change advanced power settings."

 

[Coco]

Guest's aren't supposed to be posting or starting new threads without being a member of the site and aren't login!

How are you doing it.

 

[John McGaw]

I hate to ask the obvious, but have you checked your Power Options
settings? There are a couple of different places to turn the display
off- the "Standard" settings, and a few more under "Change advanced
power settings."

Yes that is all checked. Actually there is only one display sleep time. It
appears in the basic settings and also in the "advanced" but they are the
same -- change on and the other changes. In any case both of them are a 5
minutes. I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm going to just have to
learn to start switching my monitor off when I'm going to be away from the
desk. My computer itself is never allowed to sleep or hibernate since it is
running a distributed processing application 24 X 7.

 

[LouB]

Yes that is all checked. Actually there is only one display sleep time.
It appears in the basic settings and also in the "advanced" but they are
the same -- change on and the other changes. In any case both of them
are a 5 minutes. I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm going to just
have to learn to start switching my monitor off when I'm going to be
away from the desk. My computer itself is never allowed to sleep or
hibernate since it is running a distributed processing application 24 X 7.

Maybe that app wants the monitor available at all times in case a
problem happens??

 

[SC Tom]

Yes that is all checked. Actually there is only one display sleep time. It
appears in the basic settings and also in the "advanced" but they are the
same -- change on and the other changes. In any case both of them are a 5
minutes. I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm going to just have to
learn to start switching my monitor off when I'm going to be away from the
desk. My computer itself is never allowed to sleep or hibernate since it
is running a distributed processing application 24 X 7.

And you have both 'On battery' and 'Plugged in' set the same? Do you have
any settings under your display adapter that may affect it? Is there an
enable/disable in your monitor's OSD that may have gotten changed after the
Win7 installation (unlikely, but who knows)?

 

[SC Tom]

And you have both 'On battery' and 'Plugged in' set the same? Do you have
any settings under your display adapter that may affect it? Is there an
enable/disable in your monitor's OSD that may have gotten changed after
the Win7 installation (unlikely, but who knows)?

And LouB brings up a good point. If the program is minimized, does the
monitor sleep then? Or, if the program isn't running, does it sleep? Any way
you could stop it for a few minutes to test it? That may be the whole
problem.

 

[John McGaw]

On 1/14/2010 10:00 PM, SC Tom wrote:
snipped a ridiculously long thread...

And LouB brings up a good point. If the program is minimized, does the
monitor sleep then? Or, if the program isn't running, does it sleep? Any
way you could stop it for a few minutes to test it? That may be the
whole problem.

I thought of that and tried the test again. The application runs as
multiple threads with an optional control application. I killed off all
nine threads. Then I switched to the "classic windows" screen in case it is
the fancy aero background causing problems. I shut down all gadgets,
removed the sticky notes, killed off a couple of background tasks like the
Nero backup program. In other words I killed everything I could think of.

No joy -- no sleep.

By way of restarting everything normally I told the system to restart and
then went to get some lunch. I came back and the monitor was sleeping. But
I was at login then and after logging on the monitor would no longer sleep.
So that means that something is happening that doesn't happen at the login
screen which is killing the monitor sleep function. I'm about ready to
admit defeat for the moment and move on. I get the feeling that when (if?)
the problem is identified it will be by luck and not logic.

Thanks to everyone.

 

[Seth]

By way of restarting everything normally I told the system to restart and
then went to get some lunch. I came back and the monitor was sleeping. But
I was at login then and after logging on the monitor would no longer
sleep. So that means that something is happening that doesn't happen at
the login screen which is killing the monitor sleep function. I'm about
ready to admit defeat for the moment and move on. I get the feeling that
when (if?) the problem is identified it will be by luck and not logic.

OK, now we may be getting somewhere... Probably some app or utility running
in the user space that's causing it. The system doesn't know if it's
"inactive" if certain things that get monitored are constantly being
tickled.

What's running out of your Startup group as well as HKCU and HKLM
\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run ?

One of those items (or the app that runs on this machine) may be needing an
upgrade to a Win7 compliant version.

 

[John McGaw]

OK, now we may be getting somewhere... Probably some app or utility
running in the user space that's causing it. The system doesn't know if
it's "inactive" if certain things that get monitored are constantly
being tickled.

What's running out of your Startup group as well as HKCU and HKLM
\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run ?

One of those items (or the app that runs on this machine) may be needing
an upgrade to a Win7 compliant version.

I don't doubt that you are right. It is something running after login.
However enough is being autostarted on login that it is going to take a
very long time to figure it out. Probably eliminating one at a time will be
the only way accomplish it and I just don't have the time right now to
tackle that project. At least it is narrowed down enough that an end is
(distantly) in sight.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I don't doubt that you are right. It is something running after login.
However enough is being autostarted on login that it is going to take a very
long time to figure it out. Probably eliminating one at a time will be the
only way accomplish it and I just don't have the time right now to tackle
that project. At least it is narrowed down enough that an end is (distantly)
in sight.

Try the binary search approach (which could still be pretty tedious).

Turn off half of your startup stuff. If the situation changes, turn
half of them back on, otherwise turn them all back on and turn off half
of the remainder. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This only takes log n (base 2) steps instead of n steps, but it
requires a degree of organization.

It's a great idea in theory, but I don't think it's very easy in
practice. It's worked for me occasionally, and I'm not overly
organized...

 

[John McGaw]

I don't doubt that you are right. It is something running after login.
However enough is being autostarted on login that it is going to take a
very long time to figure it out. Probably eliminating one at a time will
be the only way accomplish it and I just don't have the time right now
to tackle that project. At least it is narrowed down enough that an end
is (distantly) in sight.

Well, I finally worked it out. But the final answer still baffles me.

I installed AutoRuns and then disabled every item that I could imagine no
use for and all of the ones from questionable sources. Then I set monitor
sleep to 1 minute and started testing. The first go-round I knew that
something good had happened since the monitor slept. So then it was a
matter of enabling one item at a time and rebooting and waiting. Long story
made short: on the ninth reboot I hit paydirt. A task called NB Agent was
the culprit. The surprising thing is that this is part of Nero's Backitup.
This is one of the companies I would have trusted pretty far and I disabled
it not realizing that it was their program. Needless to say I'm
uninstalling their backup program right away. No money lost though since
the gave it to me as a free bonus when I bought Nero 9.

So ends the tale...

 

[SC Tom]

Well, I finally worked it out. But the final answer still baffles me.

I installed AutoRuns and then disabled every item that I could imagine no
use for and all of the ones from questionable sources. Then I set monitor
sleep to 1 minute and started testing. The first go-round I knew that
something good had happened since the monitor slept. So then it was a
matter of enabling one item at a time and rebooting and waiting. Long
story made short: on the ninth reboot I hit paydirt. A task called NB
Agent was the culprit. The surprising thing is that this is part of Nero's
Backitup. This is one of the companies I would have trusted pretty far and
I disabled it not realizing that it was their program. Needless to say I'm
uninstalling their backup program right away. No money lost though since
the gave it to me as a free bonus when I bought Nero 9.

So ends the tale...

I'm glad you found out what is causing it. I know how hard and frustrating
it can be to fix something that once worked. Way to go!

 

[Michael Walraven]

John,

For future use:

You could try enabling 1/2 of the items in a list. If the symptom persists
then problem is in the enabled 1/2, otherwise in the disabled 1/2.

Using the part that has the problem, divide again in 1/2 and repeat. It
quickly results in the culprit ( if only one culprit that is).

Advice too late for you this time but maybe next time :}

Michael