KazariK wrote:
Hey All,

So, I have a challenge and cant for the life of me figure out why..

So my laptop has stopped turning off the screen after the laptop has been inactive for some time..
I checked in the power settings, but that all looks good..

Any other suggestions on where to look?

Kaz

Kaz, there is something that is waking up / resetting the screen timeout. Usually a power setting for one of the peripheral devices, you can turn them all off - except 1 - make sure you don't turn off all the wake triggers, or when the screen goes off, you won't be able to wake it up 🙂

powercfg /devicequery wake_armed

wake_armed – Lists devices that are currently configured to wake the computer from any sleep state.

Powercfg Command-Line Options
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc748940%28v=ws.10%29.aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824902.aspx

powercfg [-l] [-q ] [-x] [-changename] [-duplicatescheme] [-d] [-deletesetting] [-setactive] [-getactivescheme] [-setacvalueindex] [-setdcvalueindex] [-h] [-a] [-devicequery] [-deviceenablewake] [-devicedisablewake] [-import] [-export] [-lastwake] [-?] [-aliases] [-setsecuritydescriptor] [-getsecuritydescriptor]

Here are my enabled wake triggers:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]
(c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>powercfg /devicequery wake_armed
Logitech HID-compliant Unifying Mouse
HID Keyboard Device
HID-compliant mouse (001)
Logitech HID-compliant Unifying Mouse (003)
Logitech HID-compliant Unifying keyboard (002)
Logitech HID-compliant Unifying keyboard (003)

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

You can use -lastwake to find out what last woke your screen

-lastwake Reports information about the event that woke the computer from the last sleep transition.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to register wake triggers for the screen 🙂

But, you can use the other options to disable / enable wake triggers.

You might have other wake on timer settings, look around in your power option selected.

You could trying logging the events before/during/after the wake timer time that is supposed to sleep the screen, and see if anything shows up as keeping it from turning off the monitor. You would want to start it with a duration longer than the turn off screen time to capture before/during/after to make sure you see all the events.

Here is a sample from a 120 second event logging session

C:\Temp>POWERCFG /ENERGY /OUTPUT "longtrace.html" /DURATION 120
Enabling tracing for 120 seconds...
Observing system behavior...
Analyzing trace data...
Analysis complete.

Energy efficiency problems were found.

17 Errors
3 Warnings
24 Informational

See C:\Temp\longtrace.html for more details.

Here is an app that requires a call before shutdown, the PerfectDisk defrag service

System Availability Requests:System Required Request
The service has made a request to prevent the system from automatically entering sleep.
Requesting Service PDEngine

There might be one keeping your display awake.

So, there are lots of query tools available that might give you a clue as to what is causing this, but you will need to dig in and run them.

Let us know what you find 🙂

Ok, so a LOT of what you said there is going over my head lol.. I am getting enough that I am thinking some of the info I just got..

So, I did a -lastwake, it said nothing, and wake_armed came up with only my mouse..

I am headed to bed, have to be up for work in 5 hrs.. so I will do more tomorrow night..

Kaz