Windows 7 goes to sleep whilst downloading

Participant · 8 Jun 2010 at 11:42

Hi all

Windows 7 kept waking itself up from sleep to check for updates, download WMC program updates, etc., so I set it to go to sleep after 1hr (why on earth doesn't it sleep itself again after it's done this by the way?!) so that if I went away, it would sleep again rather than staying on doing nothing for days.

Problem is, if I want to download overnight, I don't want it to go to sleep. I was under the impression that the PC wouldn't sleep if there was CPU or HDD activity and I'm certain that sleep mode behaved this way in Vista. I'm using uTorrent, which is obviously using both CPU and HDD yet W7 still sees fit to sleep the PC!

Does anyone know why W7 still sleeps itself when stuff is happening in the background and how to alter this behaviour so that it only sleeps the PC in periods of inactivity?

Thanks.

P.S. to clarify, in mentioning 'sleep' above, I am referring to the suspend to RAM version, not the hybrid sleep, which saves data to the HDD and which is pointless, as it takes ages to wake up from it

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Knubje · 8 Jun 2010 at 16:28

I'm not really too sure but I'm taking a wild stab in the dark from previous experience - it is possible to set some network adapters to sleep on no activity.

Highly unlikely to be the issue though, as you are constantly being whored with uploading to other people. Unless you are a leech/grab only kinda guy? (Remove the files when done)

Sometimes with torrents they dip in activity and if nothing is happening it could be some similar setting? What about the power options, what have you set them to in W7?

Dave**** · 8 Jun 2010 at 16:56

Just turn off sleep mode, and then when you know you are going to be away from your computer and don't want it on, turn it off. Simples. It's what I do anyway.

As for your question I have no idea since I don't use sleep mode

RobH · 8 Jun 2010 at 17:57

The default time to check for updates seems to be 3AM which is really annoying when you're asleep and suddenly you get woken up by what sounds like an aircraft taking off (my computer defaults all fans to 100% on wake for a second or so). You can play around with the powercfg command to stop it waking at silly times.

Participant · 9 Jun 2010 at 09:43

Thanks for the replies all.

Knubje said:
I'm not really too sure but I'm taking a wild stab in the dark from previous experience - it is possible to set some network adapters to sleep on no activity.

Highly unlikely to be the issue though, as you are constantly being whored with uploading to other people. Unless you are a leech/grab only kinda guy? (Remove the files when done)

Sometimes with torrents they dip in activity and if nothing is happening it could be some similar setting? What about the power options, what have you set them to in W7?

I've checked the network adapter and the only relevant power-related option, was something to do with preventing wake on network activity. I did this to stop the PC randomly waking up, which worked until the PC also decided that it needed to wake up to update Media Centre listings and not sleep itself again :mad:

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The torrents were definitely active the last time it went to sleep, as I sat by the PC on the hour mark and it was downloading and uploading at pace.

Power options in W7 are set to high performance, i.e. no CPU speed management, so HDD shutdown, sleep after 1 hour.

Davola said:
Just turn off sleep mode

No. Sleep mode is good, as the PC is usable pretty much instantly. Besides, if I was perfectly happy to do that, do you really think I'd have bothered asking the question?

RobH said:
The default time to check for updates seems to be 3AM which is really annoying when you're asleep and suddenly you get woken up by what sounds like an aircraft taking off (my computer defaults all fans to 100% on wake for a second or so). You can play around with the powercfg command to stop it waking at silly times.

I'll take a look at powercfg, cheers.