Windows 8.1 refuses to sleep

[Wynona]

I wonder if someone would happen to have a brand new 8.1 laptop or a PC with all win 8.1 certified hardware, if that person would experience such issues... Maybe this is it guys: there is a gap between win 8 and 8.1 and our hardware or at least some of it became legacy!

The closest I can come, Orbital, is that this HP Desktop came with Windows 8 and I've done nothing to "customize" it. I updated to Win 8.1 a few days ago and again, have done nothing to customize that.

So far, she sleeps. However, back before she crashed and burned after installing Win 8.1 through the "store", she didn't sleep.

So, I guess it's a no go for what you want here. Although I'm thinking that probably the reason she sleeps now is the December update . . . maybe . . .

 

[orbitalfenestra]

Yeah, I would really want a march 2014 factory made laptop with native Win 8.1. Maybe someone will eventually show up here with one and we could see if it is as wrong as ours or not. If so, then I will believe there is nothing we can do outside what was already told in this thread.

Windows 8 and 8.1 are to me very different systems and our PC's definitivly behave worse with 8.1. If we could just pinpoint what is common between us and compare to a control sample (the march 2014 win 8.1 laptop) then maybe it would be possible to correctly identify the culprit and then find a way to patch it.

This problem sucks for a long time now. I would like so much that we manage to solve it. We deserve it lol

 

[johnpombrio]

Have you guys checked to see if regular maintenance is the cause and reboot resets it?

NC, You got me thinking. I use a program called Tune Up Utilities that I have not updated to the most recent year. I uninstalled it in case it became incompatible with the latest version of Win8.1.1. So far the computer has slept but you know that story!

As for maintenance from Windows itself, mine runs only when I am using it as I have disabled wake timers in both the power settings and the network adapter.

 

[NCguy]

Have you guys checked to see if regular maintenance is the cause and reboot resets it?

NC, You got me thinking. I use a program called Tune Up Utilities that I have not updated to the most recent year. I uninstalled it in case it became incompatible with the latest version of Win8.1.1. So far the computer has slept but you know that story!

As for maintenance from Windows itself, mine runs only when I am using it as I have disabled wake timers in both the power settings and the network adapter.

if maintenance runs while your using it then it will probably still cause insomnia unless you reboot after you finish using it. Since its not running at night it will probably try to sneak in at a quiet point.

 

[bru]

It seems as if there are two sleep issues. The computer not going to sleep properly and the computer waking itself up. I've seen people report having one or the other or both problems.

For me my computer will sleep ok after a reboot. Until it doesn't. Only a reboot will put it right again. But I've never had the issue of it waking itself up whether it goes to sleep on its own or it is done manually.

It's very disappointing that an important task like sleep doesn't work properly.

 

[NCguy]

It seems as if there are two sleep issues. The computer not going to sleep properly and the computer waking itself up. I've seen people report having one or the other or both problems.

For me my computer will sleep ok after a reboot. Until it doesn't. Only a reboot will put it right again. But I've never had the issue of it waking itself up whether it goes to sleep on its own or it is done manually.

It's very disappointing that an important task like sleep doesn't work properly.

sounds like maintenance

 

[Gork]

I'm not sure how many others are in the same boat but I just ran a test and I'm pretty convinced now that the only thing preventing my pc from consistent sleep is the daily scheduled W8 system task called "regular maintenance"

This was brought up long ago in this thread, actually, and disabling it did not fix my computer's insomnia problem. I have not tried it again since we've gone through 2-3 more MS updates, however.

The task wasn't re-enabled automagically for me after I disabled it, but I probably only tested for 4-6 hours after disabling the task. When I test a change, I start from a fresh reboot. I then set sleep for two hours and wake it up after it sleeps. I then let it go until it sleeps again. Rinse, repeat - until the computer fails to sleep after a two hour time period anymore. I then come to the conclusion that the change did not fix the insomnia problem and try something else.

I've said it before, but I *have* read this entire thread and have tried everything suggested and even more that I gleaned from Google searches before coming across this thread. Only two things have worked to solve my problem permanently (at least after a few days of running tests): 1) Log in under a local (non MS) account; or 2) Log out to the Windows login screen.

Something else which has come up in recent posts again has to do with a curiosity as to whether or not a factory fresh computer with 8.1 installed on it has sleeping issues. I have not tried this but I did, as I believe I previously noted in this long thread, create a Win 8.1 installation CD and installed Win 8.1 from scratch on my system. I built the system myself, back when Win7-64 was current. Anyway, after installing Win 8.1 from scratch I still have the sleep issues. But, as indicated herein, I do not have up to date hardware specifically created for Win 8 or 8.1.

 

[NCguy]

I'm not sure how many others are in the same boat but I just ran a test and I'm pretty convinced now that the only thing preventing my pc from consistent sleep is the daily scheduled W8 system task called "regular maintenance"

This was brought up long ago in this thread, actually, and disabling it did not fix my computer's insomnia problem. I have not tried it again since we've gone through 2-3 more MS updates, however.

The task wasn't re-enabled automagically for me after I disabled it, but I probably only tested for 4-6 hours after disabling the task. When I test a change, I start from a fresh reboot. I then set sleep for two hours and wake it up after it sleeps. I then let it go until it sleeps again. Rinse, repeat - until the computer fails to sleep after a two hour time period anymore. I then come to the conclusion that the change did not fix the insomnia problem and try something else.

I've said it before, but I *have* read this entire thread and have tried everything suggested and even more that I gleaned from Google searches before coming across this thread. Only two things have worked to solve my problem permanently (at least after a few days of running tests): 1) Log in under a local (non MS) account; or 2) Log out to the Windows login screen.

Something else which has come up in recent posts again has to do with a curiosity as to whether or not a factory fresh computer with 8.1 installed on it has sleeping issues. I have not tried this but I did, as I believe I previously noted in this long thread, create a Win 8.1 installation CD and installed Win 8.1 from scratch on my system. I built the system myself, back when Win7-64 was current. Anyway, after installing Win 8.1 from scratch I still have the sleep issues. But, as indicated herein, I do not have up to date hardware specifically created for Win 8 or 8.1.

I built mine from scratch also and it was a recently released intel haswell motherboard with a Core I7. I'm using motherboard graphics. All of the motherboard drivers were for windows 8 and now for 8.1. I don't know how you can get more current. The drivers were probably more current then the retail units with the same components at the time. I actually waited on 8.1 to install production bits and it had insomnia from the start. An updated video driver later helped and then I only had insomnia after regular maintenance.

If you want to test to see if maintenance is the culprit, reboot, run maintenance manually, set a short sleep timer and it should stay awake thru the timer.

 

[johnpombrio]

Gawd, almost a hundred pages!

K, so my computer is sleeping again for the past 5 days with no reboots needed. It looks like a particular program was causing a problem after I loaded in the preliminary Win8.1.1 update. I uninstalled the program (Tune Up Utilities 2013 version), cleaned out the registry, and sleep has been OK ever since. David should be ecstatic that it actually was a "driver issue" this time (but I have this program installed on 3 other Win8.1 computers with no issues with sleep.)

SOLVED (for now, maybe, possibly, until it isn't)

 

[NCguy]

mines been sleeping also. When I disabled regular maintenance it did in fact regenerate it and it appears to be enabled. That said at 2am it tries to start it now and it fails reporting that the administrator has refused it. So apparently I no longer have regular maintenance but my pc is consistently sleeping.

 

[linw]

For no reason that I can perceive, mine is now NOT sleeping reliably. I dunno, this is just plain ridiculous.

Good luck, John.

 

[thinkfuture]

Fixed

For what its worth, I was able to get this FIXED - after trying EVERYTHING on this board - by disabling Bluetooth in the BIOS. I have a Dell Latitude E7240 SSD drives, Windows 8.1, touchscreen, the whole shebang. I tried IPv6, everything. Disabling Bluetooth even in Windows want enough. Disabled it in BIOS and it sleeps awesomely, and even runs quieter. Obviously some bad mojo going on between Windows and the Bluetooth hardware. Luckily I didn't need it for anything.

 

[linw]

Good find. No BT here, though.

Perhaps illustrates the frustrating part of all this - there seem to be as many causes as there are problematic comps.

 

[Chuck38]

For no reason that I can perceive, mine is now NOT sleeping reliably. I dunno, this is just plain ridiculous.

Good luck, John.

Do you mean that when you close the laptop, if it is a laptop, it will not go to sleep?

 

[RedLeader]

I recently built a system with Windows 8.1 64bit with Media Center on and was having sleep problems and looked through this thread to see what other people were trying. I did try a number of things such as homegroup, IPv6, device manager power management settings etc but nothing worked.

Before I installed Windows I remember setting the motherboard (Asus H81M-Plus) to use "best performance settings" and assumed (big mistake!) that everything would work as before as I had a Dell Studio 540s system which worked flawlessly with Win 8.1 Media Center. On my motherboard there are three performance settings...Energy Saving, Quiet and Performance. The default it Quiet and would seem to give a good balance of performance/energy usage.

What I did do to resolve my issues was to update to the latest version of the BIOS (0804) and then allow the update to reset to default (Quiet) settings. I am now using this setting rather than best performance settings and this has resolved my problem. Difficult to say if the update fixed the problem or setting it to default resolved it.

I might over the next few days is gradually change settings in the BIOS that I think might give better performance if required. It might be that I won't need to change anything though and that Quiet settings would be good enough.

 

[Derek]

Frustrating.

I just downgraded back to Windows 8 because SLEEP is more important to me on my HP Pavilion Notebook than having 8.1 is. My sleep problem became a full shutdown issue (as in I could not even shut the thing down with out fans spinning full-bore and screen shutting off, then the system locking-up. Holding the power button down for 3 seconds was the only thing to make it shut down. If it went into sleep, it would just spin the fans and run the CPU up really hot.

Sadly, I now that I am back on 8.0, I cannot upgrade to any of the better apps in the app store, either. MS wants to blackmail me into loading the problematic 8.1 before I can do that. This is very, very sad, because I was actually FINALLY starting to find some apps that I enjoyed using (Facebook, NCAA College Basketball, etc). I must "upgrade" before these apps are available now.

So now I am stuck with what is sort of like a handicapped Windows 7 married to the worst aspects of an unworking app store.

 

[johnpombrio]

For no reason that I can perceive, mine is now NOT sleeping reliably. I dunno, this is just plain ridiculous.

Good luck, John.

That's OK. I found it awake this morning! Who's on first.

"Who's on first?" by Abbott and Costello. [VIDEO]

 

[NCguy]

For no reason that I can perceive, mine is now NOT sleeping reliably. I dunno, this is just plain ridiculous.

Good luck, John.

That's OK. I found it awake this morning! Who's on first.

"Who's on first?" by Abbott and Costello. [VIDEO]

mine also

 

[mrguylh]

I have also been having sleep issues and tried just about everything including installing the Spring Update. Nothing so far has provided a reliable fix but I have found a satisfactory work around for me. I'm using a program called Standby Helper and so far has worked flawlessly even when the built in window's timer fails. The tool has its own built in timer and parameters. I'm not sure what all of the parameters do and I did have to change a parameter called idle count from 10 to 1 to get it to work. I also had to create a shortcut to the program and place it in the window's start up folder to get it to auto run. During testing, I was able to confirm in the event viewer that it was working even when the window's timer failed.

 

[NCguy]

I have also been having sleep issues and tried just about everything including installing the Spring Update. Nothing so far has provided a reliable fix but I have found a satisfactory work around for me. I'm using a program called Standby Helper and so far has worked flawlessly even when the built in window's timer fails. The tool has its own built in timer and parameters. I'm not sure what all of the parameters do and I did have to change a parameter called idle count from 10 to 1 to get it to work. I also had to create a shortcut to the program and place it in the window's start up folder to get it to auto run. During testing, I was able to confirm in the event viewer that it was working even when the window's timer failed.

Interesting. Is this just a simple standalone command line utility or does it install something?