Yet another sleep issue with Win7

[GreatCrouton]

So I have done some searching around the web as to why my PC suddenly wakes up from sleep on its own. I guess there are a number of reasons, I'm almost postive my network card is what is doing it. I have found ways to disable the network card being able to be used to wake up the computer BUT....there could be a problem with that. I have also recently installed a Windows Home Server in my home to which my PC that is running Win7 is attached to. It does a backup every night automatically. The way it is supposed to work is, you put your PC to sleep, when it is it's turn to backup, it is supposed to be woken up by the server, do its backup and then go back to sleep.

If I disable my network card from being able to be used to wake up the computer, it stands to reason that it will no longer respond to the servers request to wake up and do its backup, yes?

I have two other laptops in my home running Vista and they are attached to the same network and never wake up until it's their turn for a backup.

Any way this can be fixed?

 

[GreatCrouton]

Boo. 41 views and no one has an idea? Yar.....

 

[Ian]

You could try stopping the network card from being able to wake the PC up just for a single night to see if that's the problem, as if not we can rule it out However you are right that it won't be able to make backups that night.

Just disable "Allow this device to wake computer" from the network card properties in device manager.

 

[GreatCrouton]

I can give it a try but I'm 90% certain it's the network card. Odd that it happens in Win7 but not Vista. If it makes any difference, I just remembered it's on board LAN, not a dedicated card, would that make any differene you think?

 

[Ian]

I can give it a try but I'm 90% certain it's the network card. Odd that it happens in Win7 but not Vista. If it makes any difference, I just remembered it's on board LAN, not a dedicated card, would that make any differene you think?

Onboard LAN shouldn't change how it works, so testing the wake setting tonight should be an interesting experiment

 

[GreatCrouton]

I have it mostly solved now. Disalbing WoL is only part of the solution, when you check off that option, a box below it should become available to check off, it makes a reference to only wake on magic packets or something along that line. If what I'm reading is correct, I guess the machine will only wake up with network signals containing it's MAC address.

Computer sleeps till it's turn for backup and then wakes up, no other time. Now I just need to figure out how to make it go back to sleep after backup.

Odd thing is, 3 comps in the house. 1 Win 7, one Vista Ultimate and one Vista Home Premium. Only that laptop running Premium wakes up and goes back to sleep, the other two stay awake......

 

[Satchmo Bevins]

Do you think any of the settings in:

Control Panel-->All Control Panel Items-->Power Options-->Edit Plan Settings-->Change advanced power settings-->Sleep

would have the desired effect? I was thinking "Hibernate After" might be the setting to look at.

You've probably been there already though..... Sorry I'm not much help.

 

[ronpeck]

Win7 won't sleep or wakes up

This can be from many things as you have found out.. my problem was not going to sleep at all on auto...found that there was a setting in the Device Manager under keyboard that you can untick.. default setting on my comp. was "allow this item to wake up computer"...just another thing to try...fixed my prob...luck

 

[GreatCrouton]

I was quite surprised this morning to get up and see the computer was sleeping. Thought at first that maybe the backup had failed but after checking the server log, it had indeed gone through the backup and then seemingly went back to sleep. Did a quick glance at the PC log and it seems as thought shortly after the backup was done, it went back to sleep, reason was "idle system" or something like that which I found odd as I never changed any of the power related settings. It went back to sleep all by itself.

Odd....hope it keeps it up though.

 

[GreatCrouton]

Well, seems rather hit or miss. Most of the time it stays awake, sometimes it goes back to sleep. The nights it does go back to sleep, in the logs is makes reference to power management "system returning to sleep. Reason: System Idle" Which is curious as I don't have my rig set to got to sleep after any amount of idle time.

Maybe this will be fixed when it goes retail.

 

[mentormatt8]

Very interesting

That's very interesting. Vista and Win7 have so many processes running. So after your laptop is done with the backup. obviously different things can happen. Maybe if it is overloaded (more than 10% cpu) it won't go to sleep? and otherwise it would? Thought of changing this threshold?