windows 7 - Wake timers don't wake computer from sleep mode

07
2013-09
  • Joe

    I'm got a custom built PC running 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate. So far everything works great except for one thing: it will not wake up from sleep mode for a wake timer or scheduled task.

    Sleep mode itself works great. If it's sleeping, it wakes successfully when I press the power button, mash the keyboard, wiggle the mouse, or send a WOL packet. The only problem is wake timers. I even tried the program WakeupOnStandBy but it looks like that uses wake timers, so it doesn't do anything for me either.

    And yes, wake timers are enabled:

    enter image description here

    Any ideas on how to fix the problem, or troubleshoot it? I'd imagine that there would be a log somewhere telling me exactly why the wake timers are having trouble, but if there is I haven't found it.

    • Answers
  • Alois Mahdal

    I've struggled with this problem before, and have only been able to do it on one of my PCs.

    Some things to try:

    • Does your PC have a wake timer feature in the BIOS? If not, it may not be capable of waking up to a schedule.
    • Try changing the Bios sleep modes, i.e. S1, S2 etc.
    • Also, the one PC I can wake up to a schedule has ACPI 2.0 enabled in the BIOS. (Not sure if that is relevant or not.)

    Sorry I can't give you a definitive solution.

  • Synetech

    I too would advise checking the BIOS like Roh suggested. More specifically, check the power-management options and report the settings, particularly the one that selects whether to use S1 or S3 for standby.

    You can also use Microsoft’s power utility to get a dump of Windows’ power-management settings.

  • Diogo

    Check out your Power Management Options on your Control Panel:

    1. Start,
    2. Control Panel,
    3. Power Settings,
    4. Change plan settings,
    5. Change advanced power settings). -> “Sleep” option, “Allow wake timers.” ->"Enable"

    I had the same issue and fixed this way.

  • staticsan

    I'm pretty sure you will need to enable the wake timer in the BIOS. It doesn't matter what time you set it to, there just has to be a value. That makes the wake-timer enabled and the OS can update it with whatever it wants. It's a slightly wierd UI, but that's what the BIOS writers seem to have standardised on.


    • Related Question

    Windows doesn't wake up from sleep reliably when bluetooth is on
  • mika

    This issue has bugged me on multiple laptops for at least three years now, and I was wondering if anyone had similar experiences.

    The problem is that waking up from sleep results in a hang or BSOD, but only if bluetooth is enabled. This does not happen every time, but often enough that you have to be careful before using sleep mode at all.

    I think the most probable cause is the Windows driver (BTHUSB.SYS) for the particular bluetooth adapters i'm using, so I must specify the systems a little more. In both machines there has been BTHUSB errors in the Windows event log, but even these don't show up always.

    Apple MacBook (first generation)

    • Intel 945GM chipset (for Core Duo, not Core Duo 2)
    • "Built-in Bluetooth 2.0 + Enhanced Data Rate (EDR)"
    • Windows XP, Microsoft Bluetooth Driver (BTHUSB.SYS)
    • wakeup never crashes in MacOS, only in Windows
    • I don't know how you disable bluetooth in BIOS, so haven't tested without
    • sometimes just bluetooth goes down but Windows stays up

    Dell Latitude D380

    • Intel GM965 chipset
    • Dell Wireless 360 Bluetooth Module
    • Vista x64, Windows 7 x64, Microsoft Bluetooth Driver (BTHUSB.SYS)
    • wake-up from sleep works reliably if I disable bluetooth in BIOS
    • No error messages in event log (Windows 7)

    I don't expect that this can be solved, but I'd like to know what machines to avoid in the future. It was really a surprise that the Dell had the exact same problem as the older MacBook.


    • Related Answers
  • 8088

    Sleep problems occur again and again on this forum.
    This is a retake of my answer for thread 23820.

    Ideas for resolving not coming out of sleep:

    1. Look in your BIOS for the suspend ACPI options and try to switch modes among "S1 and S3", "S1", "S3" etc.
    2. Ensure "Allow this device to wake computer" is checked in in "Device Manager/$device$/ Properties/Power Management", where $device$ stands for keyboard and mouse.
    3. Turn off Hybrid sleep, see explanation here (for vista, but is the same)
    4. The hibernation file is sometimes disabled by disk cleaning, to restore do in cmd run as administrator "powercfg -h on".

    Note: Any of the above manipulation that doesn't help should be undone.
    Item 1 was the one that worked the last time this question was asked.

    In Windows 7 one can use the following command to troubleshoot sleep problems and return a detailed report:

    powercfg -ENERGY

    image

  • mika

    I was wrong.

    The problem with Dell Latitude D380 was a broken DDR2 SO-DIMM module, and had nothing to do with bluetooth.

    Replacing the memory fixed the issue. But I figured this out only after the machine started to give memory errors during the boot process.