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What is keeping my PC from sleeping?

How can I find out why my laptop or desktop won't automatically go to sleep

Find time to charge in Windows 7

Is there a utility for windows 7 which will give me the time remaining until my laptop battery is fully charged. GNOME power manager has this functionality, So i was wondering if there is a counterpart for windows 7

Too much power for 1-2 power outlets in my room? [closed]

I live in the USA, I am curious about plugging in too many computer items into 1 to 2 power plugin outlets.

Most power outlets have 2 plugins, some have 4 and more though. Many people will plug in a power strib/bar into 1 of these outlets so that they can plugin even more items.

So if I have 2 plugins near my computer, would it be bad to plugin;

• My PC
• 3-4 monitors
• Stereo amp for PC sound
• Lamp
• External drives
• Other similar items

What Is Minimum And Maximum Processor State In Windows 7 Power Management?

I am talking about this:

What should I set in minimum and maximum? I want good CPU performance but not overheated CPU and fan working like crazy.

Should laptops remain plugged in when their battery is 100% charged?

When your laptop's battery is 100% charged, should you leave it plugged in so any battery power doesn't get used, or will that cause overcharging, overheating, etc.? Should the laptop be unplugged when the battery level is 100%?

I'm asking because my laptop's screen tends to get dim when unplugged, so I don't like to run it on battery.

Is turning off hard disks harmful?

I set Windows 7 to turn off hard disks after 20 minutes of nonuse, which it does a really good job at - it seems to turn off individual hard disks that have been idle for 20 minutes exactly. When I access a drive that I haven't used in 20 minutes, I can hear it firing up and it takes a couple of seconds to access it.

Now Windows is turning off and turning on my hard disks several times a day.

Can this on/offing be bad for the drives? The case is small and I'm trying to protect the drives from overheating really (they get VERY hot!).

Edit: The accepted answer doesn't mention this explicitly, but from Minimizing hard disk drive failure

Power cycling control

Shutting down and rebooting a computer or resuming it from hibernation cycles the power to the drives in the computer. The spin-up operation performed by a drive after a power cycle is believed to place more stress on the drive than running the drive continuously for a long period of time.

Based on professional experience of system administrators, it is believed that there is a direct relationship between the number of power cycles of a computer and the probability of failure of its drives**. In other words, a computer with a high uptime may have a lower probability of drive failure than one that has its power cycled routinely.

** Attribute #4 of S.M.A.R.T. is Start/Stop Count, which seems to indicate that start/stop count DOES play a role in disk fitness and when to expect a failure.

See also

• Thermal stress relief with Power management

... Energy Star compliance results in an increase in daily power up/down cycles. The consequent thermal shock and mechanical stresses on the system can adversely affect its life...

• Computers and Monitors - When Should I turn them off?

Is there a way to close the lid on a MacBook without putting it sleep?

Is there a way to close the lid on a MacBook without putting it sleep? This would be useful when connecting the macbook to an external display, for instance.

I've never been able to figure it out myself, but here is a picture from LifeHacker where it looks like it is being done.

How do you check how much power a USB port can deliver?

Some laptops have a special USB port that can deliver more power than the other ones. However it is not always easy to identify which one is the good one, nor how much power it can deliver.

So is there a good way to figure it out? I'm open to any software or hardware solution.

Powering down the display in XP with a command

Is there a command to power down the display in Windows XP? That is, a command that causes the video card to stop sending a signal to the monitor until input is received, much as power management does after a time.

Easy way to switch power plan in Windows 10

I've a 27" external monitor connected to my laptop and I use my laptop's screen as secondary. I've both screens turned on while I'm working. When I'm watching movies, I just keep my external monitor on and turn off the lid of the laptop.

I've created a power plan in Power Options called Laptop Screen off which basically does nothing when the lid is off, then I use my external monitor as my only screen.

When I'm working, I activate another power plan which supports high performance for programming and running virtual machines. This power plan puts the laptop to sleep when the lid is closed.

Anyways, I keep switching between these plans depending on what I'm doing. This was all easy in Windows 7/8.1 as I just clicked the battery icon and switched it.

I upgraded to Windows 10 last week and now I've to dig deeper to get there. There should be an easier way? Is there a small tool I can use to do what I'm doing in less no. of steps?

1. Click battery icon in task-bar --> power and sleep settings

   

2. Then additional power settings

   

3. Switch power plan

Can Somebody Explain About Wi-Fi Device Manager Settings And Power Settings In Windows 7?

Sometimes I have low Wi-Fi signal and I am curious about the Wi-Fi settings in Device Manager and Power Settings. I would like to get an exhaustive explanation about each, so let's start with Wi-Fi settings in Device Manager:

Screen continued:

I would like to understand every property in the "Property" scroll pane.

Now let's look at Power Settings:

I would like to know what impact the selected options have on Wi-Fi.

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Enterprise with a Broadcom DW1530 Wi-Fi chipset.

In Windows 7, why won't my display stay off despite the power settings saying it should?

I'm completely stumped by this. My simple use case is that when I'm in bed, I use a cordless mouse to browse the web, watch videos, etc. - the monitor is across the room. When I'm going to sleep, I want to shut the monitor off. I also want to be able to turn it back on in the morning. I just want to turn the monitor off and on using only the mouse.

I thought of creating a power setting that turned the monitor off asap (the shortest amount of time is one minute; that's fine). I have one that does this. It worked great for almost a year on my old XP machine, and for about four months on my new Windows 7 laptop (which I essentially use as a desktop). All of a sudden a couple weeks ago, it just stopped working - my monitor won't turn off on its own anymore. Here are the settings:

I tried other options. Based on the advice here I tried nircmd. This seemed great. I created a shortcut with the command line:

"C:\Program Files\nircmd\nircmd.exe" cmdwait 1000 monitor off

I click this, and in one second the monitor goes off. However about five seconds later it turns back on, and I've been extra careful to make sure the mouse isn't moving.

I have no idea what's going on. Based on both of these things, my only guess is that something could be running in the background which somehow makes the computer think it's in use. I've tried killing as many programs as possible but I still get the same behavior. Any advice? I'm mainly curious about how to debug, but am open to other suggestions about turning the monitor off and on with just the mouse as well.

How can I make Ubuntu not lock my screen when I close my laptop?

I am running Ubuntu 9.04. When my laptop is plugged into power and I close the lid, it only turns off the screen, so when I open it up again, it comes back right away, and I can give use my media keys on the outside while it is closed.

But when I am running on battery and I close the lid, the laptop locks. This is kind of annoying, as I then have to retype my password when I resume, and my media keys don't work. It is also unnecessary since I'm not worried about the security of my laptop.

So my question is, how can I make Ubuntu not lock my screen (require a password when I come back) when I close my lid on battery?

Edit: I would like to note, that currently the power settings are set to "Blank Screen" on laptop close on battery. This causes the current behavior.

Also on some further investigation, the screen does not turn off while I am plugged in, because that power profile says to do nothing (to avoid the password). This is not acceptable for battery use, because of the power drain.

How to disallow USB devices to wake the computer by default in Windows 7

Every time I plug in a new mouse/keyboard or plug an existing one to a new USB port, I have to manually go to the device manager, go to the device's property page, and uncheck "Allow this device to wake the computer" on the "Power Management" page.

Is it possible to set up a system policy in Windows 7, such that this box is not checked for new USB mice/keyboards by default?

Edit: If there's no way to set up such a system policy, is there at least a way to enumerate and disable USB wake on devices by using powercfg in a batch file?

Edit 2: This has to be possible to do at least using powercfg. powercfg devicequery wake_armed gives a list of all devices that can wake the system. Now how can I feed this list back to powercfg and have it disable the wake on the listed devices?

What do different values of hard drive's Advanced Power Management feature (hdparm -B) affect, except spin-down?

hdparm's -B parameter is documented as:

Get/set Advanced Power Management feature, if the drive supports it. A low value means aggressive power management and a high value means better per‐ formance. Possible settings range from values 1 through 127 (which permit spin-down), and values 128 through 254 (which do not permit spin-down). The highest degree of power management is attained with a setting of 1, and the highest I/O performance with a setting of 254. A value of 255 tells hdparm to disable Advanced Power Management altogether on the drive (not all drives support disabling it, but most do).

This only gives two possible intervals, but doesn't describe what other effect different values have. What's the difference between let's say 63 and 127, etc. I couldn't find any more documentation about this. Is it described somewhere?