SOLVED: Computer Goes Back To Sleep After Wake Up

This post will show you how to prevent your computer from falling asleep too soon.

PROBLEM: COMPUTER FALLING ASLEEP TOO SOON AFTER WAKE UP


PROBLEM: COMPUTER GOES BACK TO SLEEP SOON AFTER WAKE UP


PROBLEM: COMPUTER FALLING ASLEEP TOO SOON AFTER WAKE UP

I've been telling you how I resolved the problem of Windows Vista not waking up from sleep or hibernate. Now that this problem is solved, I encountered another one: Laptop computer goes back to sleep soon after wake up or resume.

This only happens when I don't touch the keyboard after the computer is back up. It is annoying because resume from hibernate takes quite a while, maybe 2 minutes. I leave to get something else done while waiting. I come back and find computer has fallen back to sleep/hibernate again. I lost 5-10 minutes that way.

Others schedule their computer to awake at a certain time for a scheduled task. Their annoyance is that the computer goes back to sleep before the task is completed. I will show here how both problems are resolved. The same solution applies to both.

SOLUTION

It turns out (credit for reporting this goes to http://vista64.com) that Vista will fall back asleep or hibernate after a specified amount of time if not physically interacted with. Such as by typing or moving the mouse. This amount of time is set to 120 seconds or two minutes. The value is stored in registry.

If you are uncomfortable changing registry, please ask someone else or just keep in mind you need to be there within 2 minutes of Vista computer waking up and need to touch the keyboard.

HOW TO CHANGE THE TIME BEFORE COMPUTER FALLS ASLEEP

Here's how to change the appropriate key in the Registry: Click Start, then in the box on the bottom type regedit. If prompted by UAC, click Continue.

Registry editor comes up. Follow the tree: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0\DefaultPowerSchemeValues

In the left pane, click on the triangle to expand DefaultPowerSchemeValues into three subvalues. They correspond to Balanced, High Performance, and Power Saver options. To be safe, just change all three values, under both AC and DC values. So total of six. I changed from the default 120 seconds to 300 seconds. So long as I'm back in 5 minutes the computer won't fall back to sleep or hibernate.

If a scheduled program is waking computer up from sleep, make sure you set the value to longer than the maximum anticipated duration of the run of the scheduled program.

THIS SOLVED MY PROBLEM. WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Have you found this solution workable, and useful? Are you now able to get back to your computer before it falls back into hibernate? Or, are the programs that are waking up your computer getting enough wake-up time to complete their jobs? Let me know either way, ok? Just click on the "Leave a Comment" link below!