Problems related to sleep and hibernation

[tdb]

I have observed a few problems related to putting my computer to sleep.

1. If there are pending notifications when computer A goes to sleep and I clear those on computer B, then the notification icon in the top bar is still active on computer A when it wakes up. Another notification coming in will reset the situation, but the only way to manually do it is restarting Steam.

2. If I'm playing a game on computer B while computer A goes to sleep and close the game before computer A wakes up, then computer A will refuse to start any game because it thinks I'm still playing elsewhere. Accepting to close the other session does not help and I have to restart Steam. I haven't tried if starting and closing the game on computer B again so computer A can "see" it would help; often times that's impossible anyway because I might be on the road with no other computers available.

3. On Linux, when my computer wakes up, it takes Steam a long time (maybe 5 minutes, I haven't timed it) to reconnect to the server. There is no indication of any connection loss, but my friends' statuses are still as of the previous night and I'm not shown as logged in in any of the web-based views.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Why not just shutdown the PC? If you're using SSD in them, can you really not wait upto 10 seconds for it to start up from a cold boot?

[tdb]

My laptops are configured to go to sleep automatically. I generally don't bother with fully shutting them down. As for my Linux desktop, I usually have a lot of programs open and shutting it down would lose state from all of those.

I think 10 seconds for a cold boot is an underestimation. With an SSD I might just get to the OS login prompt in that time, but starting up and logging into Steam takes time too.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

How many programs do you have for start up when Windows boot?

The 10 seconds is upto, and you should be on your desktop screen, if you didn't put a login screen within 10 seconds. Starting Steam would also only take a few more seconds, since it has to start up, then start connecting, by the time finish doing that, everything else should be loaded up as well for whatever apps you have auto start on boot.

[hawkeye]

Sleep isn't worth it and can have unexpected consequences. Just set the pc to turn off the display. The cpu and gpu will idle automatically anyway. Unplug the LAN cable if no need to be connected. Stops M$ deciding that you need a new piece of shovelware.

[tdb]

I timed a cold boot of my company laptop. It's a Lenovo T440p with Samsung MZ7TE256HMHP-000L7 and disk encryption.

0 seconds: power button pressed
18 seconds: UEFI hands control over to the OS (by this point no significant disk access should have occurred)
26 seconds: Windows login prompt
33 seconds: Windows desktop
49 seconds: Steam login prompt
65-ish seconds: Steam library open (it's hard to time exactly because it doesn't open automatically)

Probably 10 seconds is spent on human interaction alone, as I have to type in my Windows password, my Steam password and my Steam guard code. Longer if I have to fish out my mobile phone from somewhere.

Aside from Steam, there's Lenovo's "solution centre" and Skype starting automatically, but nothing else. In particular, no antivirus aside from the one built into Windows.

As for sleep being worth it, my desktop draws 70 watts even when idle, and that does not include displays. By putting it to sleep during the night I save 40 euros worth of electricity per year. And it doesn't hum next to my head while I try to sleep.

I also use hibernation on my Linux desktop when I want to play a game that's only available for Windows.

Edit: Also, on laptops sleep is pretty useful when on battery power.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

So you don't have many programs for startup?

Also since it takes less than a minute, not including your login time, that if you just download instead of doing sleep, you save even more money as well not having to put up with any issues that may occur because of sleep mode. Some apps can have issues with sleep/hibernation, but if you really want to keep using sleep/hibernation then your going to have to deal with it. Also I believe you should boot a little quicker with Linux than Windows as well, if i'm not mistaken.

[tdb]

All right, I can see you're not interested in helping me or improving the quality of the Steam client. I'll just install the beta client then, verify that the problems exist there (1 and 2 are probably reproducible by disconnecting the network as well) and report bugs for them. That's the proper way to get these to Valve's attention anyway.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Originally posted by tdb:

All right, I can see you're not interested in helping me or improving the quality of the Steam client. I'll just install the beta client then, verify that the problems exist there (1 and 2 are probably reproducible by disconnecting the network as well) and report bugs for them. That's the proper way to get these to Valve's attention anyway.

That's pretty much all you can do really, none of us can magically make things work the way you want it, unless we know what the cause of delay, and reason to the issue.

[tdb]

Yes well, I was kinda hoping that someone else would have encountered the same issues and figured out a solution. Such as a hidden way of manually clearing the notification icon. But instead you basically told me that my use case is invalid. Using a feature that comes preconfigured on any Windows laptop doesn't seem that outlandish to me.