Don't shutdown PC when monitor powered off

Hi folks,

Quick summary: I'd like to prohibit Win8.1 (core) from shutting down my PC after I turn off power to my monitor. Does anyone know how to set this up?

More detail:
- I work in the basement of my home which has no view of the outside. I want a view of the outside, 12 hours a day.
- So, I have a Foscam WIFI camera in an upstairs window.
- I'm using a Vensmile miniPC to receive the WIFI video (not directly...via the router) and feed that to a monitor in my basement office.
- The PC will boot without keyboard and mouse, so I can just velcro the PC on the back of the monitor. A HDMI cable connects the PC to the monitor.
- The PC comes with Win 8.1 (core... not Pro). I've installed RealVNC so that I can control the PC for set up.
- So, on my first day of operations, this setup works fine. I configured the PC to never go to sleep. So, the monitor continually displays this video.
- If I go away for 10-15 minutes, I'll turn off the monitor (hit the power button). When I come back, I turn the monitor back on and poof, there's the video again... perfect.
- But, at night, I turn the monitor off, and the next morning the computer is shutdown. I have to hit the PC power button, reboot, launch VNC from my Mac, login to VNC on the PC, login to Win8, launch IE, login to the camera... phew, finally, I have a picture again.
- I'd like to find a Win8.1 setting (is Regedit still in Windows?) that would prohibit the PC from shutting down when the monitor is powered off. Or, increase the delay-time-before-shutdown to 15 hours. Then, I'd only have to turn the monitor on/off, and occasionally VNC to the PC/Camera if I lose house power and the camera is swung off angle.

Two words Power Settings.

Please proceed counselor "Snarky"

You don't seem to have all the 'normal' settings there. Are you logged in as Admin?
Usually there is a Sleep setting which includes time before sleep and also hibernate is under sleep.
If you click the link to show settings that are currently unavailable.. does sleep show up.. think its self explanatory if it does.

Alternatively, perhaps running the command prompt (admin) PowerCFG /? you might figure out how to set it with a command to never sleep, never hibernate. Default usually is 15 min sleep, 180 min hibernate... If I remember correctly.

Command Prompt (admin) disable hibernate;
powerCFG /h off

Thanks mikiep,

I'm studying PowerCFG from admin prompt. I'm guessing that when I first VNC to the computer and login to the microsoft account that maybe I'm admin. But, maybe not. The sleep options window only has two parameters (battery and A/C power).

But, I'm starting to wonder if something else is going on... I have a new data point: three hours into today the monitor went black and the PC was OFF. I hit the power button and it came back on (to the Win8 color band screen) and then shut off again after about 10 seconds. I powered it on again and looked around for battery monitor. Yup, the power monitor showed the battery dead. I didn't state in my initial description that the Vensmile miniPC has a battery in it. And, it doesn't come with a power adaptor. The connector looks like an android cell phone connector, so I tested their USB power/charger cable on my cell phone. Yup, that worked. So, I grabbed the closest cell phone charger and used that to power the PC (and the PC reported A/C power). So, I'm starting to think that the scenario last night was:
- the power adaptor could not supply the full power (current) that the PC needed.
- the PC draws from the battery faster than the power adaptor can charge
- the PC probably ran all day yesterday just fine
- but, finally, sometime overnight the battery was drained and the PC shut off
- at that point the charger starts charging the battery
- this morning, I find the the PC off... think the PC shutdown because of no monitor... and I boot it back on
- now the battery is probably not fully charged and the PC is again drawing faster than the charger can charge
- after three hours the battery is drained (which I saw).

To get the PC going, I grabbed another power adaptor, thinking maybe the charger was also bad. I've checked the battery charge a few times today and it seems to be going up. BTW, there was no manual with this miniPC (I probably wouldn't have read it anyway... until now).

So, I will keep studying the powercfg docs, but I'm going to do another overnight test. This might just be a battery charger issue.

OK, as I somewhat suspected, overnight the PC did NOT shutdown. So, it's not a Power Setting, it was the inadequate power source to the PC.

I'm reluctant to mark this subject as "solved" because the original Win8 question has not been answered, and I think it's a valid question. I might now word the question slightly differently: is there a setting to control how the PC reacts to the monitor being powered off/on?

My intuition is saying: no. I see plenty of ways to control when the monitor sleeps. But, I don't see anything relating to how the PC reacts to the monitor on/off. I'm still looking...