42

When I put my computer into sleep mode, it will wake up while I'm away from it. There's nothing near the computer that could move the mouse or accidentally press a button and I have no idea what might be causing it.

I tried checking what woke it, apparently LASTWAKE only tells me that it has been in sleep mode, not what woke it up.

enter image description here

I also couldn't find anything in my Power Options regarding Sleep that seems off. Poking around in the Event Viewer I notice the following: enter image description here

The Power-Troubleshooter event at the top notes the following:

The system has returned from a low power state.

Sleep Time: ‎2012‎-‎10‎-‎27T11:31:53.408927000Z Wake Time: ‎2012‎-‎10‎-‎27T12:25:51.887029300Z

Wake Source: Unknown

So does anyone have an idea to find out what might be causing it and how I can prevent my computer from randomly waking up?

11
  • 3
    Wake on network activity, perhaps? I've also owned more than one laptop that woke itself up for seemingly no reason at all - when the lid was closed and inside a laptop bag
    – agent86
    Oct 27, 2012 at 21:22
  • Yup, same for me. In my case, a 3G card that kept trying to dial out. Whenever I put the laptop to sleep, I'd power off all the radios first.
    – user3463
    Oct 27, 2012 at 21:23
  • It might be my laptop or NAS, but how can I figure out what might be causing it?
    – Ivo Flipse
    Oct 27, 2012 at 21:23
  • I'm not in front of my Win8 box at the moment, but does the event log have any details about what triggered the power state change? Oct 27, 2012 at 21:30
  • 3
    Check out your Power Management Options on your Control Panel> Power Settings>Change plan settings>Change advanced power settings. -> “Multimedia settings” option, “When sharing media.” ->”Allow the computer to sleep. Check other options one by one while you’re at it.
    – avirk
    Nov 2, 2012 at 2:48

8 Answers 8

17
+100

I've had this problem before when I had network shares that were hosted on the sleeping machine, but accessed by other machines on the network. There are some settings for network cards that determine if it can wake the machine from sleep, and under what conditions:

This TechNet article explains the power management settings for network devices on Win7. There's not a Win8 version of this page yet, but I assume they are somewhat similar.

Beyond this, many other devices with similar checkboxes to allow for waking - I'd probably advise turning as many of these off as possible, and seeing if your problem persists. If it does, you might consider a binary search style approach to figure out which one is the offending sleep-disturber.

3
  • Given that I can still wake my computer by clicking on my mouse, even though I disabled it, I think your answer must have been what solved my problem. So enjoy the bounty :-)
    – Ivo Flipse
    Nov 3, 2012 at 11:27
  • @IvoFlipse Are you saying you disabled the wake-on-mouse trigger, but you could still wake it up with the mouse? That doesn't sound right. I just want to know if it was your network adapter that was waking up your computer.
    – Samir
    Sep 14, 2014 at 10:04
  • @sammyg sadly I can't check this anymore, since I've long since upgraded the relevant parts. But yes, it didn't sound right to me either
    – Ivo Flipse
    Sep 16, 2014 at 6:27
18

If you type in your elevated command prompt powercfg /waketimers, it will display a list of scheduled tasks that will wake the computer. You might discover what could be causing this to occur.

If it is a wake timer that's causing this behavior, if you go into the Advanced power settings, under the Sleep category, you can disable Wake Timers. This might fix your issue, if this is the culprit.

For instance, I see this when executing that command: enter image description here

EDIT:

Also, by the way, I did recall this occurring with my laptop once. It took a bit of troubleshooting, but I discovered that the culprit was my Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse. I discovered that the USB dongle (which received its wireless signal), caused the computer to periodically wake up, even though the mouse wasn't powered on. I fixed the issue by finding the USB device in the Device Manager and, under Properties, turning off "Allow this device to wake this computer". However, I found a more prudent solution was to just not leave it plugged into the laptop all the time. :)

10
  • I have this as well and "There are no active wake timers in the system." That said, it could very well be that additional wake timers are set when the system goes to sleep.
    – badp
    Oct 27, 2012 at 21:51
  • It says: There are no active wake timers in the system.
    – Ivo Flipse
    Oct 27, 2012 at 21:51
  • Re: your edit. I have an external mouse and keyboard plugged in at all times but normally those devices are unable to wake up the system anyway... I guess I'll try turning that switch off then.
    – badp
    Oct 27, 2012 at 21:55
  • 1
    Nope, no joy. I found my computer was still awake when I woke up :(
    – badp
    Oct 28, 2012 at 7:37
  • How were you able to determine that it was your Microsoft Arc Touch mouse that was waking up your computer? Were you able to see that somehow in the system?
    – Samir
    Sep 14, 2014 at 10:12
7

You should check if you have anything similar to this in your BIOS:

enter image description here

Setting everything to disabled at the "Power" tab should override any Windows settings.

6

I fixed this by doing the following:

  1. Go Device Manager
  2. Selecting each keyboard and mouse device and right-click Properties
  3. Go to the Power Management tab and untick "Allow this device to wake the computer".
1
  • I like to wake up my computer with the mouse and the keyboard. However, somehow the Logitech wireless mouse woke up the laptop with a slight motion. So I disabled it, and now I stick to waking up the computer with the keyboard space button.
    – olee22
    Jul 19, 2013 at 6:55
6

There might be a scheduled task for the night that wakes up the computer.

I would check "Schedule tasks" (or whatever it is called on Windows 8), and specifically in your case the task of Microsoft / Windows / Time Synchronization / Conditions tab / check-box "Wake the computer to run this task".

You can also disallow all wake-up timers in Power Options / Advanced settings / Sleep / Allow wake timers.

Some helpful articles (and their comments) :

How to Fix a Computer that Keeps Waking Up
How To Prevent Your Computer From Waking Up Accidentally

3
  • I checked the Power Options, they were all turned off in my case. I also checked the Schedule tasks, but the check boxes are all ticked off.
    – Ivo Flipse
    Oct 30, 2012 at 13:04
  • Thanks for the tip, it was on the things that woke up my computer.
    – olee22
    Jul 19, 2013 at 6:55
  • See also superuser.com/a/522628/35525 Sep 15, 2013 at 5:35
4

Sometimes there are several things in parallel behind a problem, which was my case. There were several things that woke my laptop at night occasionally. I had to alter all these:

  1. LAN-card, Wifi-card: Switch off network card "Allow this device to wake the computer"
  2. Logitech wireless mouse: Switch off "Allow this device to wake the computer"
  3. Mouse/keyboard in Logitech unifying controller "Allow this device to wake the computer"
  4. Hard drive maintenance schdeuled at 03:00 AM(defragmenter)
  5. Windows Backup scheduled at 03:00 AM
  6. Windows Update scheduled at 02:00 AM
  7. Windows Time synchronisation
  8. Multimedia streaming
  9. Shared folders on the hard drive

I changed the settings in the Network Card properties, Mouse properties, Time settings, Windows Backup. I also run command prompt: powercfg /waketimers.

Then I went through all the sub folders of in Task Scheduler, and modified all remaining tasks to run during weekdays, at lunch time or at dinner time. I've also set to have an idle period of 15 minutes, and to stop if I resume using the laptop. For example windows backup slows down my hard drive access, and I don't want it to interrupt my work, and it will run next day anyway. See the two screenshots below.

Start menu\Task Scheduler\[tasks]\Trigger\Daily At 03:00 AM every day

Start menu\Task Scheduler\[tasks]\Conditions\Wake* the computer to run this task

I like to wake up my laptop with the mouse and keyboard, but then I disabled the mouse. It woke the laptop even just by shaking the table a bit, and sometime even without movement (probably due to the wireless connection of the mouse). So now, I stick to the space bar (it is a wired external keyboard).

Otherwise, I have Windows 8 Pro, on a 2013 model Sony S13 laptop, with UEFI bios.

enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

The "regular maintenance" setting can also be accessed through: Control Panel\System and Security\Action Center\Automatic Maintenance

1
  • Did you have Windows Update set to automatically check, download and install updates?
    – Samir
    Sep 14, 2014 at 11:44
1

Well, I have not really had a lot of time to investigate this. This problem sort of comes and goes, and I don't have all the time in the world to sit by the computer and wait for it to misbehave. But at least in my case, this appears to be related to the internal workings of Windows 8 and its different scheduled tasks and triggers.

a

You can see from the screenshot above that the automatic maintenance last ran on 2015-09-13 at 00:57 hours. Despite the fact that automatic maintenance is disallowed according to the settings, as seen in Action Center.

b

Note that the option "allow scheduled maintenance to wake up my computer at the scheduled time" is checked.

Windows automatically runs scheduled maintenance on a daily schedule when you're not using your computer.

This includes tasks such as software updates, security scanning, and system diagnostics. This maintenance will run daily if you aren't using your computer at the time you've chosen. If your computer is in use at the scheduled time or maintenance is behind schedule, Automatic Maintenance will run the next time the computer is not being used.

Pay attention to the last sentence in that text. What they left out is that it will wake the computer if necessary. "Automatic Maintenance will run the next time the computer is not being used [and wake it if necessary]."

I am often late with installing Windows updates, and I install them manually. This is because I need my computer for work, and I prefer to review the updates before they are installed. I therefore prefer to install them at my own pace and when I have time. I simply like to be in control of my own computer. Not some wise guy from Microsoft telling me how to run my system. But because my update installs are often overdue, the Windows 8 is apparently configured to kick in some of these scheduled tasks, and even wake the computer if necessary and install the updates for you, and successfully install the updates by overriding your user preference not to install updates automatically.

They have stepped this up now in Windows 10 to the point where you as a user don't even have the choice to review and install updates manually. Go figure... your computer is remotely controlled and dictated to from Redmond. Nice!

c

In the screenshot above, you can see that the wake timers have been disabled.

d

I actually use WOL (wake on lan) and I can't have it disabled. I don't want to! I choose not to! But this should not affect the problem that's being described. If there was any unexpected wakes due to network devices waking the computer by sending some gibberish packets on the network, this should be remedied by enabling WOL only for magic packets (as suggested in other answers here).

But the reason the computer is still being waken up is highly likely because of the way Windows 8 is configured to trigger scheduled tasks that wake the computer. In my case, these appear to be caused by overdue Windows update installs.

e

You can see in the screenshot above that the Regular Maintenance task last ran on 2015-09-13 at 00:57 hours. That's the same date and time as seen in Action Center.

I believe this is what's causing the infamous Wake Source: Unknown string to be printed for the powercfg -lastwake command. If you want to try to prevent the computer from waking up unexpectedly (and gain back some control of your computer) I would suggest disabling all of these scheduled tasks:

\Microsoft\Windows\TaskScheduler:

  • Idle Maintenance
  • Maintenance Configurator
  • Manual Maintenance
  • Regular Maintenance

\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate:

  • AUFirmwareInstall
  • AUScheduledInstall
  • AUSessionConnect
  • Scheduled Start
  • Scheduled Start With Network

You will find these by running taskschd.msc from the run prompt and navigating to their location.

Update: still wakes up


I just had my computer wake me up and disturb my sleep, because it can't sleep, or it won't sleep. This thing is out of control! It's sick! It's alive! I will have to hospitalize it or myself.

C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -lastwake
Wake History Count - 1
Wake History [0]
  Wake Source Count - 0

As usual... useless! But the next command pointed out a possible culprit.

C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -waketimers
Timer set by [PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume1\Users\Sammy\AppData\Roaming\Spoti
fy\Spotify.exe expires at 02:00:50 on 2015-09-20.
  Reason: generic

I did have Spotify running in the foreground. Once I exited Spotify, the wake timer disappeared.

C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -waketimers
There are no active wake timers in the system.

Go figure! But I should mention that I am overdue with Windows Update... updates. Again! But also worth mentioning, is that I have disabled WOL for the NIC a few days ago, and I have rebooted since (so those settings should be applied). So this clearly shows that WOL is not the culprit... at least not in this case. (Unless those little check boxes in Device Manager are broken, and are indicating a disabled feature but clicking on them is not changing anything in the system.)

I don't have the time and energy to investigate this further, especially not at this hour. I need my sleep. So does the computer... but some corporate jerks across the ocean seem to think otherwise so they had the system programmed to disobey my commands. Well.. I guess I will have to start pulling the plug! Hah! I would like to see them beat that old-fashioned trick. Remove the power and it should not wake up.

0

Wade through all the scheduled tasks in Task Scheduler and, under Conditions, make sure that "Wake the computer to run this task" is NOT set (except for those where you may actually want this action). You can also control whether the task runs on battery or not, if you have a laptop.

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