Steam preventing sleep (not store page videos)

[Mark]

I've just figured out that Steam is preventing my PC from going to sleep (Windows 10). It only started fairly recently but I can't figure out what has changed.

If I set the monitor to turn off after 1 minute and the PC to sleep after 1 minute, the monitor will just flick off and immediately back on again when Steam is running. If I close Steam, it turns off and stays off, and the computer goes to sleep and stays asleep just fine.

What is a bit odd is that `powercfg /requests` shows nothing as being open.

I've tried:

Starting with -no-browser so that steamwebhelper isn't running, and it still does it.

Fresh reinstall of Steam.

Overriding system, display and awaymode via powercfg for steam, web helper and client service.

All of the powercfg diagnostic options / logs, nothing shows as Steam doing anything out of the ordinary.

I can find plenty of stuff saying there was / is an issue with audio being held open by store videos, but it isn't that...

I can obviously work around this by just closing Steam when I'm done but it's a bit annoying.

Any ideas?!

[Nemesis]

I had the same problem. I play Idle Champs. It plays in the background and I tend to leave it running when I go to work. However, my monitors stopped going to sleep and I tend to not like that when I sleep. I tried everything. Nothing worked. I'm an IT pro with 20 years of system building and OS deployment. This kinda bothered me.

I had 2 issues in the end. My Razor gamepad polled the system endlessly unless you disabled the joystick. I fixed that. However, normal games still let the monitors sleep but Idle Champs would always keep it awake if it wasn't minimized.

POWERCFG -REQUESTSOVERRIDE PROCESS steam.exe DISPLAY
and/or
PS C:\Windows\system32> POWERCFG -REQUESTSOVERRIDE PROCESS IdleDragons.exe DISPLAY

Fixed it with these commands. If you can figure out what program is causing the issue, I think you can fix any sleep issue with powercfg.

[fl0wf1r3]

👍

[fl0wf1r3]

one can try this as well, didn't help in my case

https://postimg.cc/gallery/bZwP8cZ

there are so many solutions in the net but windows seems to be a bi...

[Iceira]

just exit steam and then pc will goto sleep, as i recall last post with this steam dont need to auto launched ,and nothing prevent you from close steam after be done with playing.

make steam ticket , becaause what ever it is that keep send keep alive ping (packet) is a steam problem.

if you notice the download section , and limitation there is no option for when should steam shutdown after a DL or in your case then pc is idle, and we can debat this to death, and its still steam that hold the card here in what they want it to go.

[NYüSTi]

The issue is still present in Windows 11 as well.

[Lord.Frosty]

I have the same issue even after a clean installation of windows 11. It's really frustrating. Only the steam client causes this problem. I don't want to disable Nvidia sound as I use a 4k TV connected to my computer for movies and casual gaming. I hope this gets sorted out soon. It's been like this for months.

[Shinayser]

Can you guys believe that I returned a notebook because I thought it was a hardware problem? And the company who sold me (Avell) couldn't figure out what was causing the problema and gave me a new one. And the issue still persisted.

But now I found out the problem was steamm all the time. UNBELIEVABLE!!!

[BBPu]

Encountering this issue too on my new computer, after narrowing it down to steam client I searched and found this thread. Steam is misbehaving for sure. Mark, do you have any updates on this issue?

Thanks

[Quitch]

I filed a support ticket with Steam on this and it was closed with "no known solution".

[theniddler]

I know this is an older discussion, but I wanted to pass along, I also opened a ticket and was told they cannot help me to talk to a local IT professional.
I figured out, my computer had multiple audio devices.

I read here that someone disabled their NVidia audio device.
I went into my device manager and I have multiple audio devices that are built on the mother board.
I disabled the Intel Display Audio and the computer now goes to sleep.
I still have the Realtek Audio which runs my speakers.
So audio still works and now the pc goes to sleep.

[IronRod]

Diposting pertama kali oleh NYüSTi:

...
If I disable the NVIDIA High Definition Audio device in the device manager, the issue goes away...

Exactly the issue on my system. Thanks -- points awarded. :-)

[StatiC]

I just want to thank everyone for their input on this issue. I have also struggled with this for what feels like a year or 2 now. I was just killing Steam and started not really playing steam much because of this for that reason. The Steam Deck got me back into Steam so I really wanted to find a workaround for this. I really didn't like forgetting to kill steam and coming home to a computer that was running all day using electricity when I didn't want it to.

Powercfg /requests and the other Powercfg commands have never shown that anything is active or causing the monitor to wake up.

I have a MAG something monitor that has built in speakers. It is attached to my Nvidia 2080 Super via DisplayPort. When the monitor goes to sleep, the computer makes a device disconnect sound through my on-board mainboard computer audio drivers which indicated something on the monitor was disconnecting (likely the speaker audio). I thought it must be the disconnect sound causing it to wake back up or something but that is not true because with Steam disabled, I still hear the sounds but the monitor goes to sleep properly. I don't use the monitor speakers.

With Steam running (doesn't matter if it is set to start up with Library or Store page), the sleep kicks in, I hear the device disconnect sound through my normal speakers, screen goes black for 2 seconds and then it turns right back on again. The computer repeats this keeping the monitor on forever.

With Steam not running, The monitor goes to sleep properly.

There is a driver in the 'Audio inputs and outputs' section of Device Manager that shows the monitor name and the NVIDIA HD audio. Disabling that one doesn't help for some strange reason. Disabling NVIDIA HD audio in the 'Sound, video and game controllers' section does fix the problem. I believe NVIDIA HD Audio is only used for audio devices through DisplayPort(and maybe HDMI?) but I am not 100% sure about that. Disabling that does not cause me any problems as I don't use the monitor speakers. Disabling 'the HD audio device in the 'Sound, video and game controllers' section also removes the monitor device in 'Audio inputs and outputs'.

The big question is why does Steam only cause this to happen? Is Steam doing something when it detects an audio device disconnect from the system? It can't be the audio disconnect sound causing it because with the HD audio enabled with Steam not running, that sound still happens and the monitor goes to sleep properly.

The work around is to disable the 'NVIDIA HD Audio' in the Sound, video and game controllers' section but if someone is using monitor speakers that would kill their sounds so it would be good to have Steam find out why their software is only causing this issue.

If you only knew how happy I am now :).

[StatiC]

Well... it was short lived... I don't think I gave it enough time. About 17 seconds later, the monitor turns back on again. Maybe it fixed part of it (it happened much quicker before) but now there is still something else Steam is doing.

[StatiC]

I think I have it solved with a workaround now. I noticed that there is /lastwake for powercfg command. It was only showing that the PCI-to-PCI Bridge was waking the PC after it goes to sleep. Using HWINFO64, I was able to determine what devices were on the that PCI bus and removed them one by one until the monitor went to sleep. Just disabling the 'Allow this device to wake the computer' checkbox for all of them in Device Manager didn't solve it. I had the 'powercfg -devicequery wake_armed' results completely empty and yet it still woke up about 17 seconds after the monitor went off. It is the Sculpt keyboard from Microsoft that is causing the problem somehow for me when Steam is running only. The Sculpt has a USB dongle. The only way to fix it was to disable the 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' for the Sculpts 'Microsoft Hardware USB Mouse' in device manager.

This does not explain why it is only when Steam is running that the problem presents itself though. What could Steam be doing with the Sculpt mouse? Very strange... especially since I never power on the mouse. I only use the keyboard part of the Sculpt setup. The mouse is powered off in a drawer without a battery in it.

Well... that is how it is behaving today anyway. Hopefully it stays that way. I re-enabled the NVIDIA sound devices and it still seems to be sleeping properly but I don't hear the hardware unplug Microsoft sound so I might have to also keep that disabled if after my next PC reboot that the wakeup happens a few seconds after it goes to sleep again. It is very possible there are 2 wake issues related to Steam on my system.

Fingers crossed.

[Quitch]

Interestingly, I have the exact same setup, I'm using the Sculpt Keyboard, but the mouse is powered off. My device is called "Microsoft USB Dual Receiver Wireless Mouse (Mouse and Keyboard Center)" and disabling its ability to wake the machine doesn't change anything. At this point I've disarmed every device's ability to do so to no effect.

The Nvidia HD Audio thing seems to fix it though. Thankfully, that isn't something I need.

Ultimately though, this is a problem for Steam to fix. With energy prices how they are this is more of a pain in the arse than ever.