Windows 8.1 refuses to sleep

[johnpombrio]

After having this problem for the past few days I tried everything and couldn't figure out what the issue was. After finding this thread on Google, I wanna buy everyone a drink.

Only issue for now is sleep takes a bit to start, maybe 2-3 minutes after the amounted time from clicking sleep. This going on for everyone else?

Owl, welcome to Win8 forums. I am glad that this thread helped you out. You can click on the little thumbs up to bump the rep of the person whose post helped you out. Good as gold ale. While you are here, look at the dizzying list of tutorials that are available, a wealth of knowledge.

Was it the HOMEGROUP issue or something else that solved your sleep issues? I am trying to keep track of how widespread this bear of a bug is...

 

[rockitdoc]

Hate to Mess Up the Success

I have no Homegroup set up, turned off the 6 thingy and it still won't sleep when set on 1 minute.

Now what?

Sorry.

 

[johnpombrio]

I have no Homegroup set up, turned off the 6 thingy and it still won't sleep when set on 1 minute.

Now what?

Sorry.

Heh. Welcome Rockitdoc. No worries, mate! We all are throwing out what works for us but there is no "one solution" for all. It is best to read all of the posts in this long, longer, and getting longest post as some other things can bite you that you did not know about, like the "Media sharing" bug.

First, you have to wait up to 5-10 minutes sometimes before the computer will sleep using the "1 minute" timer. Do not expect immediate results. Next is to check if it still is a connection issue by turning off the LAN adapter as I previously posted. That will pin it down to a specific few things.

 

[prism]

Ok, here is my problem with sleep that I have been struggling with since I first installed Win8. BTW, I NEVER set up a homegroup.
After a fresh boot, sleep works according to timer and manually. After using a torrent to download something, however, timer sleep fails. Manual still works fine. Only if I cut WIFI will timer sleep work again. Otherwise I either have to log off and on again or restart the computer. I believe I have tried pretty much all the advise that I have come across over the past month and a half. Nothing works!
One other thing, I never had this problem on Win7!

 

[johnpombrio]

Ok, here is my problem with sleep that I have been struggling with since I first installed Win8. BTW, I NEVER set up a homegroup.
After a fresh boot, sleep works according to timer and manually. After using a torrent to download something, however, timer sleep fails. Manual still works fine. Only if I cut WIFI will timer sleep work again. Otherwise I either have to log off and on again or restart the computer. I believe I have tried pretty much all the advise that I have come across over the past month and a half. Nothing works!
One other thing, I never had this problem on Win7!

Prism, welcome to Windows 8 forums. While you are here, check out the tutorials, a lot of good info there.

Well, you know your issue lies either with networking or the internet. I had an issue once where there was a hung update by MS that prevented sleep (unhide any hidden updates). Do you log onto Microsoft Live when you log in? If not, try logging in and see if sleep occurs or visa/versa. Your computer probably has sharing enabled (it's by default) so the old "no sleep when media sharing" may be enabled. Make sure to go through all of these posts here (and yes there are a lot) and see if any of them helps.

I wonder if NOT setting up a homegroup causes an issue?

 

[prism]

Prism, welcome to Windows 8 forums. While you are here, check out the tutorials, a lot of good info there.

Well, you know your issue lies either with networking or the internet. I had an issue once where there was a hung update by MS that prevented sleep (unhide any hidden updates). Do you log onto Microsoft Live when you log in? If not, try logging in and see if sleep occurs or visa/versa. Your computer probably has sharing enabled (it's by default) so the old "no sleep when media sharing" may be enabled. Make sure to go through all of these posts here (and yes there are a lot) and see if any of them helps.

I wonder if NOT setting up a homegroup causes an issue?

John, thanks for the quick reply. The "triggering" event in my case is launching bittorrent and actually using it to download something. For some reason that breaks the timer sleep until I either cut wifi access, log out and log back in or restart.
By MS Live do you mean logging in through my MS cloud account? If so, yes, I do! Should I really switch on homegroup even if I dont have anything to share with?

TIA!

 

[johnpombrio]

Prism, dang! Unusual problem. What is your torrent program? I am running Utorrent and that seems OK. Do you really kill the torrent (Alt-F exit) or just close the window? If the torrent is still alive, it will prevent sleep. Check your notification icons and make sure the torrent icon is not hidden.

 

[prism]

Prism, dang! Unusual problem. What is your torrent program? I am running Utorrent and that seems OK. Do you really kill the torrent (Alt-F exit) or just close the window? If the torrent is still alive, it will prevent sleep. Check your notification icons and make sure the torrent icon is not hidden.

Good point, will try it out. Will also test uTorrent (have been on bittorrent until now).

 

[XweAponX]

uTorrent usually keeps your system alive by default, there ought to be settings for that in the preferences panel.

 

[prism]

It seems bizarre that in this day and age with the supposedly modern architecture of Win 8.1, there is no overriding sleep function that would ignore all and every request to keep the computer awake!

 

[Rudy Mas]

I have the same problem with my freshly installed Windows 8.1 on all my systems.

After looking for a solution on the Internet, I found one program I used that kept it awake, and I also discovered something weird.

First thing, the program that kept my main PC awake, was VirtualBox. When you use it with the Bridge Network Driver installed, the PC won't go to sleep, and when you force it to sleep, it awakens and crashes your Windows installation. Only a reset can recover from this. After removing VirtualBox, my PC went to sleep. I thought I had found the solution.

The next day, I noticed something else. During the day, my PC went to sleep a few times as it should be because I was working on my Laptop and it had reached its idle time for sleep mode. And then it happened, a good hour before I went to sleep, I had to check my E-mails on my main PC and after this, it didn't go to sleep until I forced it to sleep.

After this, I looked further into the problem and found something weird.

I have three machines running Windows 8.1 in my Homegroup. And the thing I noticed was that my PC's went to sleep but not all of them.

When PC1 and PC2 goes to sleep, PC3 stays awake. However, When PC2 and PC3 goes to sleep, its PC1 that stays awake.

It's always the last one awake that doesn't want to go to sleep mode.


I seems that as long as the PC's can find another PC awake in the network, they can go to sleep. But the moment that one of them is the only one awake, some process starts in Windows Homegroup that keeps the PC awake. Maybe it tries to find another PC every so often what makes the PC stays awake.


I don't know enough of the inner-workings of Windows to find a solution, but I hope that someone with enough knowledge can do something with this.


Now that I know this, it isn't that bad, because normally it's always my laptop that is on the longest and I always us a Shutdown before I go to sleep myself.


However, my main PC always awakens in the morning to do some tasks and then it stays awake until I start using my laptop.


Saw it this morning. I had set that my main PC should awake at 5am and when I woke up at 9am, my PC was still awake. I started my laptop and it took only a few minutes before my main PC went into sleep-mode.

So, the things I noticed I can repeat as often as I want. It's always the last one that doesn't want to go to sleep.

 

[Rockhound]

I have three machines running Windows 8.1 in my Homegroup. And the thing I noticed was that my PC's went to sleep but not all of them.

When PC1 and PC2 goes to sleep, PC3 stays awake. However, When PC2 and PC3 goes to sleep, its PC1 that stays awake.

It's always the last one awake that doesn't want to go to sleep mode.


I seems that as long as the PC's can find another PC awake in the network, they can go to sleep. But the moment that one of them is the only one awake, some process starts in Windows Homegroup that keeps the PC awake. Maybe it tries to find another PC every so often what makes the PC stays awake.

Rudy, welcome and thanks for joining in on the discussion. You and I are experiencing the same problem. It's the wierdest thing. I know that sleep is set up correctly because each computer will sleep on its own accord as long as it is not the last one on the network to sleep. The first two computers sleep perfectly. However, the last computer (could be PC 1, 2 or 3 depending on whichever one was used last), simply does not sleep.

Like you, this is where my expertise ends. I just simply don't know what process or service could be causing it. I'm hoping someone here could point us in the right direction!

 

[prism]

I just stumbled on a whole range of updated windows 8.1 drivers for my Dell and installed them promptly hoping that it would resolve the issue. Unfortunately not! This is incredibly frustrating, my Macbook Pro running the newly released OS 10.9 is literally light years ahead!

 

[Steve06]

I just stumbled on a whole range of updated windows 8.1 drivers for my Dell and installed them promptly hoping that it would resolve the issue. Unfortunately not! This is incredibly frustrating, my Macbook Pro running the newly released OS 10.9 is literally light years ahead!

You have my sympathy, I also tried the latest drivers from my mainboard manufacturer which made no change. And as for you, my Macbook upgraded smoothly to OS X Maverick without compromising any of the existing functionality.

Do you have homegroup disabled and does it sleep then? Same question for disabling the ethernet adapter.

 

[prism]

I just stumbled on a whole range of updated windows 8.1 drivers for my Dell and installed them promptly hoping that it would resolve the issue. Unfortunately not! This is incredibly frustrating, my Macbook Pro running the newly released OS 10.9 is literally light years ahead!

You have my sympathy, I also tried the latest drivers from my mainboard manufacturer which made no change. And as for you, my Macbook upgraded smoothly to OS X Maverick without compromising any of the existing functionality.

Do you have homegroup disabled and does it sleep then? Same question for disabling the ethernet adapter.

Steve, I never activated homegroup, does that count as equivalent to disabling? As for the ethernet adapter, switching the wifi transmitter does the trick for me which suggests that Windows 8.1 is overriding sleep because of a connection through wifi. Now is that a connection within my network or outside, I dont know. Nerve wrecking to say the least!

 

[Steve06]

I should think so, but to be sure you can check in your network settings (by right clicking on the network icon in your system tray, opening the network and sharing center and then clicking on advanced sharing settings) whether it says "Allow windows to manage homegroup connections" or "Use user accounts...".

It seems we are in the same boat. I assume it is outside connections as I have checked how the PC responds when all other devices in my LAN are off. Wireshark could perhaps shed light on the culprit communications and I have it installed, yet I do not have the expertise for this kind of detective work. Can anybody help?

 

[Stipa]

Solution?

Ok. I used S3 sleep state on Win7, Win8 and never had problem, until I installed Win8.1 Preview, now the same problem happend on full release of Win8.1. A problem was that PC went to sleep, but then imediately ~1s waked-up. The major cause of this problem was uTorrent, but not always. Sometimes some other programs trigered imediate wake-up calls. Wake on lan in BIOS was disabled, but that didn't helped.
Anyway, after getting sick of this *******, I looked to network adapter properties, found few options called "wake on xxxx" and disabled them. Look image below

 

[johnpombrio]

Stipa, welcome to the Windows 8 Forum! Check out the tutorials when you have a chance. Great stuff there.

I do not have the Wake on LAN in my properties but I had also turned off my "allow this device to wake the computer."


There was one suggestion from the Technet forums about disabling this under services:



Knock on wood but since I fixed all errant folders in all of my Homegroup folders, sleep has been working great on all three computers.

EDIT: NO FIX. After a couple of days, the computer was awake again.

EDIT 2013-12-28 This did not fix the problem. For me, a MS update on Dec 11th fixed it.

 

[Steve06]

Stipa, that's probably a possible solution if as you say the problem is that the PC is waken up from sleep. However, after days of monitoring of the issue at hand I can say that at least in my case the PC does not reach sleep state in the first place.

 

[prism]

Stipa, that's probably a possible solution if as you say the problem is that the PC is waken up from sleep. However, after days of monitoring of the issue at hand I can say that at least in my case the PC does not reach sleep state in the first place.

That is also my problem, getting the machine to actually sleep. Once it enters sleep mode, it stays that way unless I wake it up.