Waking PC up from sleep (SOLVED! Thanks to Mozthecat).

[Ian D J]

Morning all.

Not quite a camera-related subject but since we all need and love our computers just as much as our lens-related equipment, my issue is the total inability to wake up my 5 years old W10 PC from sleep mode just by pressing a keyboard button or a wiggle of the mouse. Instead I have to bend down to quickly press the power button to wake the PC from sleep (I even put my back out at one time!). In fact, it's been the case since I first got the computer and it's only just now that is is starting to bug me.
Both my USB keyboard and mouse are cabled, I've looked at all power options settings ("use mouse/keyboard to wake computer"), installed drivers for the keyboard/mouse, tinkered about with the Device Manager and BIOS, Googled it up until my eyes fell out and still no luck (sadly the tower doesn't have the older PS/2 sockets).

Before I will finally admit defeat and accept as something that W10 probably doesn't support and have to change settings so that the PC doesn't go to sleep so soon (change from 15 mins to something like an hour which may be less eco friendly, especially as I turn the PC off at the end of the day), I am wondering if it is the same at your end and you have been able to crack it.

Yours truly.

 

[gramps]

Any help?

https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/computer-wont-wake-up-from-sleep-windows-10/

 

[Ian D J]

Hi Gramps. That was one of the many web pages I've googled up and followed that to the letter but still no joy but thank you anyway.

 

[Diving Pete]

Sometimes you just get these issues - I use a USB keyboard that has a sleep button at the top - but c.an I get it to turn back on - NOOOOOOO....... LOL
Don't worry too much about it - lots of drivers interact in a way that WASN'T the disired intention

 

[Nod]

I am wondering if it is the same at your end and you have been able to crack it.

Win10 here and I tend to "Sleep" the 'puter rather than either shut it down or leave it fully on. Always starts with a button press (keyboard) here, followed by a PIN.

 

[Ian D J]

Sometimes you just get these issues - I use a USB keyboard that has a sleep button at the top - but c.an I get it to turn back on - NOOOOOOO....... LOL
Don't worry too much about it - lots of drivers interact in a way that WASN'T the disired intention

Indeed, may have to put it down to one of the many foibles of W10.

Win10 here and I tend to "Sleep" the 'puter rather than either shut it down or leave it fully on. Always starts with a button press (keyboard) here, followed by a PIN.

That's what I want to achieve but for the love of the good Lord I can't get it to do that. I can make the two monitors go to sleep after a set period and wake those up with the keyboard but the PC itself still remains active and whirring away until that, too, go to sleep at a later time and have to press the tower's power button to wake it.

 

[Mozthecat]

have you tried different USB ports for the keyboard and mouse? Are they plugged directly into the back of the tower (directly onto motherboard) and not via usb hubs or similar?

 

[Giblets]

One small point with the 'Sleep' setting on W10 is that if I have an external HDD attached and active on waking up the HDD is not recognised and has to be physically unplugged and plugged back in to activate it. One can't use the 'Eject' facility as the drive is not showing up in Explorer.

 

[Box Brownie]

Daft question/thought.....

When I was dabbling with such options a good while ago (I did not bother to continue to use it) the keyboard button wake up needed, as I think I recall for, the appropriate button to be held down for 5 seconds i.e. not just a quick key press!

 

[Ian D J]

have you tried different USB ports for the keyboard and mouse? Are they plugged directly into the back of the tower (directly onto motherboard) and not via usb hubs or similar?

By Jove! You've only gone and cracked it! Indeed the keyboard is attached to a hub, so I plugged it into a spare USB socket at the back . . . and hey presto, it worked! I wonder why I lost the ability a few years ago, that was when I started attaching everything to a USB hub after I quickly ran out of native sockets in my last PC tower.

 

[broc]

Maybe the PC has turned the port connecting the USB Hub off to save power, which is the default option?

 

[Ian D J]

One small point with the 'Sleep' setting on W10 is that if I have an external HDD attached and active on waking up the HDD is not recognised and has to be physically unplugged and plugged back in to activate it. One can't use the 'Eject' facility as the drive is not showing up in Explorer.

I had the exact same issue and ended up putting the HDD inside the PC as a separate drive for files and folders. I then went onto buying another external drive but that was plugged into the back of the PC rather than a hub.

Now I've solved this keyboard issue, perhaps that probably what was where I was going wrong with the first external hard drive, I may have had it plugged into a hub.

 

[Ian D J]

Maybe the PC has turned the port connecting the USB Hub off to save power, which is the default option?

I have found that in Device Manager under Generic USB hub and while the "save power" part was ticked but the option to wake the computer was greyed out.

 

[broc]

I have found that in Device Manager under Generic USB hub and while the "save power" part was ticked but the option to wake the computer was greyed out.

You should untick the save power part, at which point the other option should be available. If the PC turns the port (serving the hub) off there's no way it will be able to receive any signal from any device attached to it. The same goes for internal USB hubs.

Power 'saving' for USB & network adapters used to cause loads of issues at the school where I worked as network manager, especially with laptops which were connected part of the time via network cable & the rest of the time wireless.

 

[petersmart]

Win10 here and I tend to "Sleep" the 'puter rather than either shut it down or leave it fully on. Always starts with a button press (keyboard) here, followed by a PIN.

One of the problems with continually using "sleep" rather than turn the computer fully off is that the normal housekeeping duties, putting files away properly etc, are not done and over time this may actually lead to a loss of files etc.
I had a friend who had been doing this for years on his Mac and he couldn't find his photos until I told the computer to sort it out, and it took several hours for everything to be restored to their normal place and all his photos finally recovered.

 

[Nod]

It does get fully shut down every so often (about once a week) and (luckily the table it's sat on is wood so I'm touching it!!!) don't seem to suffer any problems.

 

[broc]

I prefer to use hibernate rather than sleep if I am not shutting my PCs down completely.

 

[Ian D J]

Indeed, I let my PC go to sleep after 30 mins when I'm away from it during the day but got fed up continually bending over to press the power button to wake it up, but the PC is shut down every night (like me, really). I'm a home carer looking after an elderly mother, so I do spend a lot of time on the PC for (obviously) photography, doodling, doing my Facebook weather page, watching DVDs and I'm getting back to playing my old early 2000's FPS games (well, the ones that can run on W10) since I've fitted a new graphics card and SSD drive in it to compliment the 16 gb ram.

So there you have it, it was something quite simple that solved it. All those late nights trying to suss it out. But thanks for the response to this thread.

 

[LC2]

One of the problems with continually using "sleep" rather than turn the computer fully off is that the normal housekeeping duties, putting files away properly etc, are not done and over time this may actually lead to a loss of files etc.
I had a friend who had been doing this for years on his Mac and he couldn't find his photos until I told the computer to sort it out, and it took several hours for everything to be restored to their normal place and all his photos finally recovered.

Just a small correction, and probably not of relevance to the OP's issue, but...
Windows 10 - When you "shutdown" the computer, it doesn't shut down, it goes to sleep (you can change this behavior in the power settings).
You don't actually get a full power off/on unless you do a 'restart'.
You can prove this to yourself by checking the uptime in task mangler before and after a shutdown & before and after a restart.
Only the restart will set the timer back to zero.

 

[droj]

I had the exact same issue and ended up putting the HDD inside the PC as a separate drive for files and folders.

I wonder if you also externally backed up anything important to you from that internal drive? Because I once lost several internal drives together & could only surmise that it was the result of a power supply rather than a mainboard issue, since installing them into a new build didn't reactivate them or reveal their contents ...

 

[Mozthecat]

Once lost a server motherboard to a blown capacitor, once warranty repair had been done went to reuse the usb powered portable hard drive for backup on its next rotation to find the head had crashed...used a powered hub for the backup drives after that despite the speed penalty.