Power Settings for Screen Display aren't working

[yogi27]

Before I deleted the Lock Screen with password sign-in (I thought this might correct problem); that when I hit the Lock Screen to bring up the field to insert password that it would fade-out a bit. Shortly after my power settings were no longer taking hold and my PC desktop screen would stay on for all hours.

 

[PGrey]

Before I deleted the Lock Screen with password sign-in (I thought this might correct problem); that when I hit the Lock Screen to bring up the field to insert password that it would fade-out a bit. Shortly after my power settings were no longer taking hold and my PC desktop screen would stay on for all hours.

Unless you have a specific reason not to, I'd suggest just restoring your power settings to default, and then starting "fresh", after a reboot.
Power Plans - Reset and Restore in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

The problem with where you're at now is that possibly some (group) policy settings have been changed, etc, and tracking these down can be incredibly tedious and time consuming.
Since we're just talking about a power-settings-reset, it's typically easy to just reset and tweak again.

 

[slivy58]

Unless you have a specific reason not to, I'd suggest just restoring your power settings to default, and then starting "fresh", after a reboot.
Power Plans - Reset and Restore in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

The problem with where you're at now is that possibly some (group) policy settings have been changed, etc, and tracking these down can be incredibly tedious and time consuming.
Since we're just talking about a power-settings-reset, it's typically easy to just reset and tweak again.

I'm having similar problems after the Anniversary Update (was fine prior), screensaver no longer works, display won't turn off after preset time nor does sleep mode function as once did. Tweaked power settings and restored defaults along w/updating "all" device drivers, still no resolve. Also Googled unit the cows came home yet only found things already tried, very frustrating to say the least.

 

[PGrey]

I'm having similar problems after the Anniversary Update (was fine prior), screensaver no longer works, display won't turn off after preset time nor does sleep mode function as once did. Tweaked power settings and restored defaults along w/updating "all" device drivers, still no resolve. Also Googled unit the cows came home yet only found things already tried, very frustrating to say the least.

Try using the Powercfg cmd line utility.
You can do things like check your current scheme "/query", see what might be keeping your system awake "/requests", do a full Sleep Study, which shows you potential issues with your scheme/plan "/sleepstudy", and a whole host of other things.

This is my "go to" tool, for figuring out these types of problems.

 

[slivy58]

Try using the Powercfg cmd line utility.
You can do things like check your current scheme "/query", see what might be keeping your system awake "/requests", do a full Sleep Study, which shows you potential issues with your scheme/plan "/sleepstudy", and a whole host of other things.

This is my "go to" tool, for figuring out these types of problems.

Thanks PGrey... Did give it a quick go just before I gave up and it didn't appear to be doing anything at that time, works fine on my work PC so maybe I just was too frustrated at that time (no, not me lol) so will give it another go when I get the chance.

 

[PGrey]

You have to be Admin (run an Admin Console session), I should've mentioned that too.

Sure, if it's still busted on your home laptop, give it a go, it's often pretty revealing. The bummer is, if it turns out to be a Group Policy thing that got set by an app or something, it's a pain to tweak back, particularly on Home (vs Pro, where GP tool is pre-installed).
The sleep study is kinda' cool, in a geeky way, shows you things you probably didn't know about your PC, and you can search for "Error" and "Warn", if you want the quick-dirty version of what issues it found.

 

[slivy58]

So, spent many hours/days doing extensive deductive testing/tweaking and we are STILL at ground zero. Just to be clear, sleep etc was working just fine pror to AU as this PC gets the most use.

As for my PC affected, if I “manually” initiate sleep or hibernate mode via the Start Menu or Power Button no problem. If Power Button is set to “turn off display” pressing it just blanks it for a brief millisecond, will not stay off.

- Tweaked all power plan settings while testing at each step
- Checked all device drivers and their Power Management, updated drivers as necessary
- Disabled multiple devices (one or more than one at a time) then tested
- Used “Powercfg” tool to help pinpoint issue, gave no relevant clues whatsoever
- My keyboard, mouse and one other device are the only things allowed to wake computer, all three were disconnected and tested… Thankfully we have a touch display.
- Checked registry for proper values etc
- Ran Windows Troubleshooting, Power and System Maintenance, found/fixed nothing
- Ran System File Checker (sfc /scannow), again, zero problems detected
- Rolled back to previous build, no change
- Reinstalled AU whilst keeping files/apps intact, no change
- Goggled, Googled and Googled some more, same old solutions keep coming to the forefront which have already been done/tried many times over.

Since updating all my devices to the AU build I’ve only be able to work on two trying to resolve what ails them, so far we’re batting a 0% success rate with fresh installs appearing imminent, not looking forward to the others. Right now MS and the ‘new” Windows has lost most of its credibility with me, thankfully we still have our Mac, iOS, Android and Linux devices to fall back on because by far, they have been the less stressful/troublesome in the past 2 years.

 

[PGrey]

What does "powercfg /requests" show you?

Here's mine for example, I have TeamViewer running, hence the server process that blocks sleep:
C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg /requests
DISPLAY:
None.

SYSTEM:
[DRIVER] \FileSystem\srvnet
An active remote client has recently sent requests to this machine.

AWAYMODE:
None.

EXECUTION:
None.

PERFBOOST:
[DRIVER] Legacy Kernel Caller

ACTIVELOCKSCREEN:
None.

 

[slivy58]

What does "powercfg /requests" show you?

Mine is as shown below w/cmd.exe ran under admin privileges. Using ??lastwake? only ever shows the Power Button (see below) since that is being initiated manually by me, never goes to sleep otherwise. Can change settings no problem using ?powercfg? utility and these changes are reflected across the board yet makes little difference.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg /requests
DISPLAY:
None.

SYSTEM:
None.

AWAYMODE:
None.

EXECUTION:
None.

PERFBOOST:
None.

ACTIVELOCKSCREEN:
None.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg -lastwake
Wake History Count - 1
Wake History [0]
Wake Source Count - 1
Wake Source [0]
Type: Device
Instance Path: ACPI\PNP0C0C\2&daba3ff&1
Friendly Name:
Description: ACPI Power Button
Manufacturer: (Standard system devices)

 

[PGrey]

What about a sleepstudy?

Having nothing in "/requests" is good news, that means (in theory), there's nothing causing an interrupt that would prevent sleep. That sort of takes it back to a setting, possibly a hidden group-policy or similar.
The sleepstudy should help, and there's another powercfg switch too, that digs up "odd" items, but it's not published in the help interface, you have to search around (I'm not remembering it off-the-top right now).

These can be frustrating, but I've debugged a lot (I used to work on h/w and s/w crossover Windows tests) of these, and have yet to not find a solution for one, at least one that didn't involve a buggy driver (which should be showing on the above)...

 

[slivy58]

What about a sleepstudy?

Having nothing in "/requests" is good news, that means (in theory), there's nothing causing an interrupt that would prevent sleep. That sort of takes it back to a setting, possibly a hidden group-policy or similar.
The sleepstudy should help, and there's another powercfg switch too, that digs up "odd" items, but it's not published in the help interface, you have to search around (I'm not remembering it off-the-top right now).

These can be frustrating, but I've debugged a lot (I used to work on h/w and s/w crossover Windows tests) of these, and have yet to not find a solution for one, at least one that didn't involve a buggy driver (which should be showing on the above)...

Are you thinking of "powercfg -ENERGY"? This particular command brought back results showing, in more than one instance, that "USB Suspend:USB Device not Entering Selective Suspend. This device did not enter the USB Selective Suspend state. Processor power management may be prevented when this USB device is not in the Selective Suspend state. Note that this issue will not prevent the system from sleeping".

As for the sleeptudy, entering command brings back these results:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg -sleepstudy
S0 Low Power Idle is not supported on this machine. Cannot run tool.

Sleep states available on my system but no "Standby Connected", reason for not being able to run?:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg /a
The following sleep states are available on this system:
Standby (S3)
Hibernate
Hybrid Sleep
Fast Startup

The following sleep states are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

Standby (S0 Low Power Idle)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.

 

[slivy58]

Some history?

This is an AIO PC w/27 display that?s 4ish years old, last summer I installed an SSD while designating original HD for data and programs, had capabilities to be setup w/both drives and ended up being one of those flagged as potentially having issues if upgraded to AU.

Other than your usual OS, Windows apps and so on updates no other programs etc have been installed for months, screensaver, screen timing out, sleep and hibernate mode were working perfectly fine prior to AU and would always initiate automatically, never once had an issue with that.

For me everything points to AU build because no mods or tweaks were performed by me or anyone else for an extended period prior to this problem occurring but maybe I?m missing the boat, highly doubting that.

 

[PGrey]

My connected standby is False too, but my sleep states work fine.

Thoughts I had, while reading around, like you probably did:

Have you tried creating a (new) power plan (mostly just mirroring stock), and set that one?
This would completely eliminate any corruption, such as the above connection issue, if it were an issue.

Try another user, preferably a "temporary admin" set the sleep times really short (everything to say 1 minute or so)?

On the new power plan (above), try setting all the times to 1 minute, and then (assuming it doesn't sleep), look at the event logs right around that mark, which should have *some* kind of attempt at sleep, and typically the reason why it fails.

I think this last one should be pretty telling. I had a problem with my wife's machine, after AU, where it would wake at 1 minute after sleep, every time, despite having no waketimers. Turns out, the backup s/w we use had a "hidden" waketimer, but the event viewer allowed me to see that it was the culprit, and track it down.

 

[slivy58]

My connected standby is False too, but my sleep states work fine.

Thoughts I had, while reading around, like you probably did:

Have you tried creating a (new) power plan (mostly just mirroring stock), and set that one?
This would completely eliminate any corruption, such as the above connection issue, if it were an issue.

Try another user, preferably a "temporary admin" set the sleep times really short (everything to say 1 minute or so)?

On the new power plan (above), try setting all the times to 1 minute, and then (assuming it doesn't sleep), look at the event logs right around that mark, which should have *some* kind of attempt at sleep, and typically the reason why it fails.

I think this last one should be pretty telling. I had a problem with my wife's machine, after AU, where it would wake at 1 minute after sleep, every time, despite having no waketimers. Turns out, the backup s/w we use had a "hidden" waketimer, but the event viewer allowed me to see that it was the culprit, and track it down.

Have tried new power plans with sleep times short (1 min) and event logs never seemed to show anything, another "user" didn't offer much help either.

At one point I even had the computer set up pretty much bare bones other than drives, display adapter etc, no WiFi, peripherals etc yet no change.

Left it alone for the most part this weekend and will give it another go soon, been around the block so many times with this now that it feels like we could do it in our sleep haha. Will start fresh once again just to make sure we didn't miss anything which could be a possibility with too many repetitious attempts along with the wait times in between those attempts.

... And thanks for your help PGrey it's much appreciated, have a an awesome day!

 

[PGrey]

Did you have any luck? Things like this bug the crud out of me, it's good it's not my system, I would've been up all night debugging, and ticked off the family;-]

How about when you use powercfg /getactivescheme, it's linked to a good (valid, with sleep states) scheme?

What happens when you use the sleep button, or the power menu item, and select sleep and/or hibernate, does that work?

I don't think I ever asked this before, but if it can't enter a state, due to a request or similar, the event viewer should show it. If this is the case (it won't go to sleep or hibernate at all), my trick of setting the (sleep/hibernate timeouts to 1/2 minutes respectively, should help. From there, look at the event-viewer, after 135 seconds or so, and you can typically see what gets registered, in terms of error or warning events, for power (you can filter on power events, but usually just a glance and some clicks does it).
The event viewer can really be useful here, if it can go to sleep manually, but just fails to automatically put itself

I'm glad you appreciate my help/attempts, wish we were actually getting closer to solving it (which is possible, usually it's one thing that does it) though ;-]

 

[holdum333]

Hi ! I have been following this thread for awhile. You might give this in-place upgrade some thought! I would create a back up image before using this. It should be safe, but I always like having a back up image of my OS on a external drive before trying these drastic options!!:wink:
Sometimes, Windows goes wonky and needs repair work. A factory reset may be more effort than it's worth because it requires reinstalling all the applications and reestablishing all settings. But an in-place upgrade to the same OS version preserves applications and settings.
The repair of Windows 10, can resolve many problems in Windows 10 functionality and some times is the most reliable and quickest way to fix the Windows 10 malfunctions. Also the in-place Windows 10 upgrade, which performed with the repair process, ensures that Windows 10 have the latest updates and fixes installed.
How to repair Windows 10 with in-place upgrade. - wintips.org - Windows Tips & How-tos

 

[slivy58]

Really appreciate your interest in this matter PGrey but sadly feel we’re flogging a dead horse here, don’t know but something tells me until a complete refresh/install is performed I won’t know one way or the other... Hey, can I ship the computer to you haahaha .

Anyhow... Manually invoking screen saver, sleep, hibernate all work just fine, stays as set and wakes up no problem, just does not go into “a” state automatically nor the next state in succession if available, never. As mentioned before as well, can set power button to turn off screen but comes back on instantly and never stays off. Tried several different/new power schemes, added a new user (admin) and tired power settings, looked at event viewer (no notable references), and active schemes are correct according to what is being displayed using powercfg, even registry shows everything is as it should be.

Yep driving me nuts too and as of late Windows hasn’t been my bestest friend, have my work PC as well that had the Windows App store along with several apps become completely none functional after AU, just as with the problem here nothing has resolved it, not cumulative updates, rollback to previous Windows version, restore, WSReset and so on, that’s another story though.

All I know is since owning this PC it has never given me an ounce of problems with the power settings, for that matter, since 1988 don’t recall having much problems in that department with any computer I’ve owned. Not sure if something went amiss with my hardware or it is truly an AU thingy but find it awful coincidental it became apparent after the update.

After dealing with many different platforms since W10 became “it”, (Android/iOS/Mac OS/Linux) it sure feels as if Windows is going in reverse, pretty much zero issues with the others in nearly 14 months and beyond yet 10 keeps being a thorn in my side, every update has me holding my breath. On a somewhat more positive note, I ran several beta versions of 10 via multiple PCs starting in Oct 2014, worked without many issues (obviously lacked many features), was happy at that time anticipating great things... Then the bugs started creeping in upon the consumer release come July 2015 with that trend continuing today, at least IMO.

 

[PGrey]

That's really strange, does sound like your screen-saver or similar isn't allowing it to turn the display off (which in turn would prevent any sleep-state-transition).
I'd play around with the screen-saver, but I'm assuming you've already disabled it, and if so, that shouldn't be it.

What Holdum333 says has good merit too, in-place-upgrade is a good way to "reset' things, typically without having to actually reconfigure your system afterwards.
I used to use this quite a bit, up through Win7, not as much on Win10, although I did use it to bail myself out of a weird IE session-restore problem.
It's "problematic" on Win10, IME, which is probably why I haven't used it as much; several times I've attempted an in-place, but have gotten blocked by setup, at several points, so it's sort of fallen out of my standard "bag of tools".
It's a good next step though, good to have a backup as he mentions, but if it works, it's usually not that much of a (time) hit.

 

[slivy58]

Lol, already done the in-place-upgrade and although nothing new (bad ) was introduced it didn't fix or alter my power settings one iota but thanks for suggesting it.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android

 

[holdum333]

Hi! There are a lot of good suggestions here and I'm late to the party. I'm wondering if a clean boot would help. It would eliminate software conflicts
Just another thought to this issue!.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135