Windows 8.1 refuses to sleep

[ZenixNet]

I've read through the first 17 pages of this forum but I'm still having issues.

When I run powercfg last_wake nothing comes up and event viewer has no record of my computer waking up and on the off chance it does Windows has no idea what woke it.

Something else odd is that my power button only puts the computer to sleep probably 25% of the time, the other 75% it does nothing, even when holding the button down to the point of when a force shutdown should happen.

I have an AsRock Z77 Extreme6 motherboard with Intel i7 3770k. I have installed all the newest drivers and software from Asrocks's website. Action Center says to update my INF drivers and chipset drivers though no matter what I do.

 

[linw]

Zenix, perhaps you could explain more thoroughly what problems you are having. I can see what problems you have with the power button but it is not clear about the rest.

Does your comp sleep but not wake (you mention waking investigation)? This area is not spelt out. Have another go!

Has your comp ever slept properly with the power button, like with another win version?

 

[ZenixNet]

After about 2 hours during the day my computer will wake itself up and never go back to sleep on its own. When I run powercfg lastwake after that nothing comes up, just "Wake History [0]"

Pressing the power button does nothing most of the time even though it is set in power options to send the computer to sleep.

Everything worked with Windows 8, just not 8.1.

 

[S Malik]

After about 2 hours during the day my computer will wake itself up and never go back to sleep on its own. When I run powercfg lastwake after that nothing comes up, just "Wake History [0]"

Pressing the power button does nothing most of the time even though it is set in power options to send the computer to sleep.

Everything worked with Windows 8, just not 8.1.

I provided a solution that has worked for me & other people on this forum. You can check it out:
http://www.eightforums.com/general-support/28226-windows-8-1-refuses-sleep-49.html#post312742

 

[johnpombrio]

Whow! I have been out of the loop from this post for a while!

I am doubtful for all the folks that have "solved" the problem by turning off various things. I have pretty much two identical machines, one is an Ivy Bridge and one is a Haswell, but that is about it. One sleeps with Win8.1 release and one does not. They are running all of the exact same programs, same settings, same logon, same Homegroup, same Skydrive, same third party programs, same windows defender, same firewall settings.

If anything, I would guess that there is something different in HARDWARE rather than any software, especially Windows software.

I too have solved the sleep issue MANY TIMES. Leaving Homegroup solved it, turning off Skydrive solved it, turning off power services solved it, rebooting every night solved it, using a local account solved it. Until they all didn't solve it. The issue always came back! Sometimes I could sleep for 4-5 times, once I went a week but it came back!

If you can get it to work for you, then that is terrific! But most of us here have tried all these latest fixes without luck. Just do not get your hopes up.

 

[S Malik]

Whow! I have been out of the loop from this post for a while!

I am doubtful for all the folks that have "solved" the problem by turning off various things. I have pretty much two identical machines, one is an Ivy Bridge and one is a Haswell, but that is about it. One sleeps with Win8.1 release and one does not. They are running all of the exact same programs, same settings, same logon, same Homegroup, same Skydrive, same third party programs, same windows defender, same firewall settings.

If anything, I would guess that there is something different in HARDWARE rather than any software, especially Windows software.

I too have solved the sleep issue MANY TIMES. Leaving Homegroup solved it, turning off Skydrive solved it, turning off power services solved it, rebooting every night solved it, using a local account solved it. Until they all didn't solve it. The issue always came back! Sometimes I could sleep for 4-5 times, once I went a week but it came back!

If you can get it to work for you, then that is terrific! But most of us here have tried all these latest fixes without luck. Just do not get your hopes up.

I have two systems, one 32 bit & the other 64 bit, both were running fine with Windows 8 Pro. When I upgraded to Windows 8.1 (Clean Install), I started to get this Sleep issue. I tried all kinds of things to fix this, but the final solution I found was switching to a Local Account.

 

[metaligoat]

I have also been having problems with both automatic sleep and automatic hibernation since updating my home computer from 8 to 8.1. It worked fine in Windows 8. I have a Dell XPS18 that is < 5 months old and has not given me any other significant issues up to this point.

I have attempted (I believe) every solution suggested in this thread, with no success. I disabled Skydrive using the registry hack that was posted previously (I don't have Pro or Enterprise and didn't feel like paying $100 to get gpedit only to have the solution not work). I went into my power settings and turned off hybrid sleep, and set multimedia to allow the computer to sleep. I disabled all sharing on the computer and ditched HomeGroup (there are no other HomeGroup members on my network). I converted to a Local account per maliksaad's suggestion above. All of these solutions have failed to correct the issue.

One thing I wanted to mention that I did not see in previous discussions in this thread is that I can't even set up automatic hibernation on this computer anymore. The sleep timer is being ignored for sure, but I can't even set a Hibernate time anymore.
What's happening is that something is setting the Hibernate timers for my active power plan to Never, no matter what I do. To be specific: in Power Options, my machine is set to the Dell power plan. When I click Change Plan Settings, then Change Advanced Power Settings, I expand Sleep, then Hibernate, and it's set to Never. I change these to any number at all (preferably 15 on battery and 30 plugged in, but I've tried larger values just for giggles), then Apply, then OK. If I then go immediately back into the advanced power settings for the Dell plan, expand Sleep and then Hibernate, they have changed themselves back to Never.

If I go into the advanced settings for the other power plans which are not active, I can set the Hibernate values to whatever I want, hit OK, then go back into the advanced editor and look at it, and the values I entered are still there. However, if I then select that power plan as my active power plan, and then go back to the advanced settings, the Hibernate settings are once again set to Never.

I tried running powercfg -requests to see if there is a power request issue, but all listings say None. I don't see that being the issue anyway, because I can't even set Hibernate to anything other than Never in the first place.

I thought it might be an admin rights issue, where maybe it can't write my changes to the registry. Problem with that theory is, there's only one user account on the computer and it is designated as an administrator, plus all my other changes to the advanced settings seem to stick (whether they actually kick in is a different story). This is the same reason I don't think my AV is responsible - if my AV were locking my settings, it would be locking all of them, not just the Hibernate timers. I did try disabling my AV anyway, but no dice.

I even tried creating a brand new power plan, and I have the same exact problem. Something is looking at my active power plan and actively changing the Hibernate timers to Never. I imagine it's the same thing that's causing it to not sleep (though the "turn off display" timers are working just fine), but I just have absolutely no idea what's causing it at this point. I'm beginning to think it's just something that's broken in 8.1 that MS needs to fix. But if anyone has any other bright ideas, I'm all ears.

 

[prism]

I have two systems, one 32 bit & the other 64 bit, both were running fine with Windows 8 Pro. When I upgraded to Windows 8.1 (Clean Install), I started to get this Sleep issue. I tried all kinds of things to fix this, but the final solution I found was switching to a Local Account.

I concur, problem solved once I switched to local acc. It has been more than a week and sleep timer finally works as intended on 8.1.

 

[metaligoat]

Update: It appears that sleep mode may be corrected now for me, even though I have switched back to a standard Microsoft account and re-enabled SkyDrive via the registry hack previously posted. However, I am still having the issue where my active power plan, no matter which plan that is, is being set to Never for the automatic hibernate times. Unfortunately I don't know enough about all this to know whether that's related to the sleep issues being discussed, or if that's a truly separate and unique problem.

 

[magilla]

Sleep issues in 8.1 and SkyDrive and Non-Microsoft Account

My issue is not unlike most of the other posts. I updated to 8.1 and since then I have been unable to get sleep to work without manually putting the computer to sleep. I have also experienced the issue of the computer waking up whenever it decides its time to wake up even though I have disabled the advanced sleep options regarding responding to 'wake up' both in bios and in advanced windows power configuration dialog box. And like others have reported,, the second computer on my network with windows 8.1 will allow my main computer to sleep if it is on and active. Three other computers have windows 7 and there is no issue with them. My question is how to set up a non-Microsoft account in windows 8.1? I have tried but am informed that you cannot do that with SKYDRIVE. Whenever I disable SkyDrive in my task menu it comes back on immediately! Any suggestions? I don't know why this issue has not been addressed by Microsoft. There is no way to get rid of SkyDrive so it seems I am stuck with a 'broken' computer.

I finally read the post on how to change to local account. Following this change, the system still does not sleep -- unless manually -- and it still wakes up spontaneously! I have switched back to Microsoft account.

 

[Gork]

I just wanted to pipe in to add that I've been encountering this problem (computer won't sleep on a timer) since upgrading to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8 (both 64 bit) the day it was released. I have read this entire thread thoroughly (as well as several others in other forums) and have tried every single idea which has been brought up and more through testing on my own. I even created a Win8.1 DVD (that was an adventure) and re-installed Win8.1-64 from scratch - no change. I use a Microsoft Account to sign into Windows. As others have posted, after a reboot my computer might sleep a handful of times before eventually hitting the insomnia mark upon which time it won't sleep on a timer again. Manually putting the thing to sleep works fine and the computer stays asleep. I did not have the same problem in Win8-64 or Win7-64.

I have found that only one of two things work reliably for me and these are workarounds, most certainly not solutions. If I SIGN OUT the computer sleeps reliably after the two hour timer I've set passes. I also created a NON MS Account for testing purposes. If I sign into that account the computer sleeps reliably on a timer.

The only other thing I want to try before chalking this up to yet another famous MS bug and moving on is LOCKING the computer instead of actually signing out. I doubt this will work but plan on trying it anyway.

And when I say I've tried everything in this thread, I do mean every single idea with multiple hours of testing for each one. I've been following the thread since close to the day OP posted and just felt I should share my experience to possibly help out as so many others have done.

EDIT:
I just noticed that after signing out from my MS Account, verifying the computer sleeps, then signing back in using the MS Account the computer sleeps again a handful of times, as when I described it does temporarily after a reboot.

EDIT again:
Didn't seem worth making another post for this but using <windows>+L to lock the computer instead of signing out the user did not allow the computer to sleep. This is what I expected would happen.

 

[Steve06]

Still no improvement for me with yesterday's wave of new updates - so there's at least no definitive solution before 2014. Perhaps Microsoft wants us to sit it out until Windows 9 is released?

 

[Tomdaws]

Hmmm, I've been following this thread, & others, since the release of 8.1. I originally installed it using the Windows Store & struggled with the 'Sleep' problem so I did a clean install using the ISO which made no difference either. I've tried the fixes mentioned but my Sleep problem always returns. The most success I had was to turn network discovery off, but that made it awkward to access my NAS.
In the end I reinstalled Win 8.0 & my desktop now sleeps perfectly again. I was hoping that MS would issue a fix for this problem so that I could try 8.1 again, but no luck so far.

 

[Wynona]

In the end I reinstalled Win 8.0 & my desktop now sleeps perfectly again. I was hoping that MS would issue a fix for this problem so that I could try 8.1 again, but no luck so far.

Yeppers, that's about what I did too, except that my new HP 500-056 crashed and burned with Windows 8.1 and had to go back to the factory for reinstall/repair of Windows 8.

She's working fine on Win 8, and I'm not afraid of reinstalling 8.1, I just don't want the several headaches it causes . . . For now, I'll stay with Win 8.

 

[videodj]

I've been following this thread for a while and the only thing that worked for me was switching to a local account. I rarely use the app store and find skydrive to unreliable, so not a major issue. I'm just happy It now sleeps when it should.

 

[S Malik]

Good news, Microsoft has resolved this issue in today's Windows 8.1 updates.

 

[Rockhound]

Good news, Microsoft has resolved this issue in today's Windows 8.1 updates.

I have not yet updated my computers, but it is possible that you are correct. Apparently, the following update was included with this month's updates. I don't know if it fixes our problems or not, but it was the only one that I saw which seemed like a possible fix:

KB2909528 - Windows RT 8.1, Windows 8.1, or Windows Server 2012 R2-based computer never enters a DRIPS

I'm very curious to know if any one else had performed the updates and had any success? It would be a relief to finally hear some positive news!

Note: This update is included as part of update rollup KB2903939.




Interestingly, I also saw that there was an update for Skydrive (KB2913320). However, I'm not sure that it is related to our problems though.

Also, I read this paper from Microsoft about a new technology called "Connected Standby". This sounds really promising: Introduction to Connected Standby

 

[Wynona]

Good news, Microsoft has resolved this issue in today's Windows 8.1 updates.

O . . . K . . .

How like Microsoft to never acknowledge the problem, then quietly go about fixing the problem without even telling us they're working on it. That is, if your information is correct.

I'll wait a few days to hear from others in this thread.

Now I'm wondering if MS will quietly fix the NumLock problem . . .

 

[magilla]

Not for me

Good news, Microsoft has resolved this issue in today's Windows 8.1 updates.

The update you cite has done nothing for my issue -- my computer still refuses to sleep and continues to wake up spontaneously after it is manually put to sleep.

 

[johnpombrio]

Been a while! Welcome to Tomdaws and magilla to the Eightforums. Check out the tutorials on the site, they are terrific!

I too have noticed a couple of things after the latest update. Suddenly my Newegg app is running again so MS did something to fix it as I have not changed anything with it.

As for sleep, I THINK it is sleeping now. It certainly is not doing so quickly as it still takes a few minutes with the hard drive light flashing away randomly and sometimes showing a lot of activity. But it is progress!

As someone posted to turn off logging into MS Live, I turned that off and uninstalled a program called Tuneup Utilities that "cleans the drive".

As for folks like magilla, check out post #168 on page 17 that has the MOST COMMON reasons why the computer will not sleep. It sounds like you have the network adapter allowing wake ups in the device manager-properties-advanced power setting enabled.

As with ALL "fixes" we have posted, time will tell if it is really fixed!