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Windows PCs can't sleep properly, and Microsoft wants it that way (www.spacebar.news)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] [email protected] 150 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The gist:

The always-on nature of phones and tablets is incredibly convenient. Wouldn’t it be great if your (non-ARM) laptop or desktop could do this too? Save power when you’re not using it, but still be ready at a moment’s notice?

Microsoft certainly thought so, which is why when Windows 8 was released, it introduced a new feature called Connected Standby. If the hardware indicated support (foreshadowing), instead of telling the BIOS to enter system standby, Windows would enter Connected Standby.

I first ran into the wonders of Modern Standby on my Dell Inspiron 5482, an 8th generation Intel 2-in-1 laptop with a spinning hard drive. After a few months of owning it, I started noticing that it wasn’t sleeping properly. If I closed it, I could still sometimes hear the fans running even 15 minutes later. If I put it in my backpack, there was a good chance I’d take it out at 0% battery or to the fans running at full blast and the CPU dangerously close to overheating. Half the time the hard drive wouldn’t even spin down, which sure is nice when you’re planning to be jostling it around in a bag for a couple hours.

The worst part of this all was that Dell gave you no official way to disable Modern Standby. Windows itself isn’t any help, either. If the BIOS says it supports Modern Standby, Windows takes it at its word and completely disables the ability to enter S3 sleep (classic standby). There’s no official or documented option for disabling Modern Standby through Windows, which is incredibly annoying.

Another issue with Modern Standby is what can trigger wakeup events, and for how long. Supposedly, only certain built-in Windows functions, like updates and telemetry can actually wake the device up, but so can apps installed through the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft probably deserves most of the blame for this mess. It created the feature and has been (allegedly) pressuring vendors to implement it and discontinue support for S3 sleep.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Was running into the same previously. Putting my desktop to sleep only to find it waking up in the middle of the night, and for some reason not going back to sleep afterwards. I believe the solution for me previously was disabling wake timers. Hasn't been an issue since. However this is a much larger issue on things like laptops where preventing sleep while in a backpack could lead to excessive heat generation. Infuriating that it's forced by default

[–] LUHG_HANI 30 points 1 year ago

And don't sleep or close the lid with power connected. It won't realise it's on battery once it's asleep. Hence battery drain.

[–] SkyezOpen 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I disabled wake timers, wake on lan, and peripherals waking from sleep. It worked for a bit until an update completely destroyed my computers ability to sleep at all. The screens would shut off but nothing else. Still running, still logged in.

Enabled hibernation because fuck you windows.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

My pc randomly wakes up from hibernation.
I hate finding it on in the morning.

The lazy workaround is to hibernate, then wake it, then shut it on the boot screen. That way it stays off, but I still get to restore my session.

I've tried more reasonable solutions but had no luck, and am tired.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Mine also did that, but with the added 'benefit' of forgetting how to turn on my graphics card when it did had to wake up at some point without my input.

Fun times...

[–] Zoboomafoo 7 points 1 year ago

Here I was blaming the cat for using my computer at night

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble 5 points 1 year ago

Desktops typically don't support modern/connected/s0 standby. Wake timers is something different designed to wake a machine up from classic S3 sleep.

[–] FishFace 5 points 1 year ago

That's different: probably due to Windows Update, but there are other things that can set wake timers to do various things at night. For some genius reason they never go back to sleep.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Half the time the hard drive wouldn’t even spin down, which sure is nice when you’re planning to be jostling it around in a bag for a couple hours.

I'm pretty sure this is what trashed my first laptop. Thankfully I didn't have a lot of information on there yet and was able to replace the hard drive. But absolutely ridiculous that this passed quality control.

[–] Pantsofmagic 6 points 1 year ago

They laid off quality control.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Is that different from ... the thing you have to disable in Windows, before you can access the NTFS partition in Linux?