Monitor not turning off / pc not entering sleep

[Joburgal]

Has anyone had any issues recently with steam preventing monitors from turning off / pc entering sleep? With steam minimised my monitors will turn off for a few seconds but then immediately turned on again. With steam closed everything works fine in line with windows power settings.

Nothing showing in powercfg/requests.

Tried contacting support but they are useless and pointed me here!

[Iceira]

You do know that idea died along time Ago, reason is many , wake on lan , to keep alive to things that update at our pc.

you can force a quicker minute 10 afk then shutdown, but i even seen my telly keep playng after 3 hour it should enter sleep mode but dont, and yet it work sometime and actual do turn off.

so its not that simple then app is made with keep hammer the door or update something.
this inclued all the task run as services.

feel free to check screen save to 5minute afk and hibernations,
do update Driver an firmware or monitor.ini if the Brand not just use Windows default.

gl with hunt that app that keep make a keep alive or doing it.

this work fine in vista era , then it was and new hot thing, but i have seen more get into issue with it lately. ( maybe ask MS for advice could be a good idea if i recall correctly it seem as part of windows solutuion back then with quick wake up and such.

[Bee🐝]

This might work as well, it's an "ol' classic".

Device Manager -> Network Adapters -> Power Management -> Tick off allow waking on this PC.

[Joburgal]

Thanks so much guys for advice! As you suggest it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack with sleep troubleshooting!

I double checked the wake on lan and that’s definitely off.

The issue is definitely steam, as with the steam client closed everything works perfectly. Might try a reinstall when I have the energy, as I don’t see any recent posts of people experiencing the same issue:-)

[Joburgal]

Originally posted by Bee:

This might work as well, it's an "ol' classic".

Device Manager -> Network Adapters -> Power Management -> Tick off allow waking on this PC.

I think with your push in the right direction, I may have fixed this. Wake on Lan was disabled for all Network devices but my XBOX Wireless Adapter had the tick on for allow wake. Turned this off and things seem to be working again, fingers crossed!!!! Thanks so much :-)

[Bee🐝]

Originally posted by Joburgal:

Originally posted by Bee:

This might work as well, it's an "ol' classic".

Device Manager -> Network Adapters -> Power Management -> Tick off allow waking on this PC.

I think with your push in the right direction, I may have fixed this. Wake on Lan was disabled for all Network devices but my XBOX Wireless Adapter had the tick on for allow wake. Turned this off and things seem to be working again, fingers crossed!!!! Thanks so much :-)

Awesome! Glad that pointed you in the right direction.

[Joburgal]

Scratch that... the damn monitor slept once and now I'm back to always on! The saga continues :-)

[Iceira]

You might want to contact MS support /user forum, as i said they had experience in this from the past , maybe they have log or app that can hunt such down, if i recall correctly work best with vista gen OS , but ofc should work on later but , that still require all app obey the rules in not make keep alive, or something that can stop them. i only recall pc from that era had fewest problem with it.

[Bee🐝]

Originally posted by Joburgal:

Scratch that... the damn monitor slept once and now I'm back to always on! The saga continues :-)

Darn it! Just when you turn your back....it snuck back in.

Did you run cmd without quotes: "powercfg -lastwake" and "powercfg -devicequery wake_armed"? They might identify the culprit.

Also, a loooooong shot, are there any other computers on the same network?

Iceira's advice is good as well!

[Illusion of Progress]

As far as Steam goes, you're the second person I've seen mention that Steam being running/minimized is causing it to wake back up. I just tried it on my system, and Steam being running (window open but minimized) is not causing it to wake back up on me. I do have Wake on LAN and schedule tasks both disallowed from waking the PC, and I also have keyboard and mouse disabled from waking the computer (the latter especially can cause it to wake on its own seemingly). Power button for waking/starting.

Sometimes your uses/programs may prevent sleep itself from being as good of an option, but on its own, it still works just as fine as it used to in my experience. In your case, Steam may well be preventing it for some reason. Can't say why; my (limited and very inconclusive) test is not showing it to wake back up on me though so there's more to it.

Originally posted by Iceira:

You do know that idea died along time Ago

this work fine in vista era , then it was and new hot thing, but i have seen more get into issue with it lately.

Sleep is neither nothing "new" from the Windows Vista era, nor nothing that works less as good as it used to, at least not on a fundamental level.

It has changed (for example, in Windows 7, one press of the mouse/keyboard/power button, depending on what you had set to be allowed to wake the PC, had you back at the desktop ready to go, but in Windows 10, it puts you at a welcome screen, which requires two clicks, three if you count minimizing the auto-open start menu, to be where Windows 7 would have had you [and I need to research if I can skip this welcome screen when waking from sleep as that'd be lovely]), but it still works just as well.

[Carlsberg]

Open CMD in admin mode, enter;

powercfg -requests

This will list all apps that interrupt sleep.

[Joburgal]

Thanks for the help guys! Will have a bit of a play over the weekend when I've got the energy to look at this :-)

[Joburgal]

Think I'm going to give up with this one. Last wake isn't showing anything as it only registers wakes when waking from sleep (not turning on the monitor when its shut down). Disabled all devices in the wake armed list.

In any case all these steps are futile as it's clearly related to steam (or as one of you mentioned above steam + one of the other many apps thats on my pc). With steam open the monitor turns off and then immediately on. Steam closed everything works fine.

Tried reinstalling steam and then remembered that it deletes everything in the main library :-( Now waiting for cyberpunk to download very slowly due to the lunar sale :-(

Its not worth the pain and effort, hopefully an update to steam / another app will fix this in the meantime i will just close steam when I've finished gaming :-)

Thanks again to everyone for your support, you rock!

[Illusion of Progress]

Wait, so the PC is actually sleeping fine but the monitor turns back on, and only when Steam is running? I was under the impression it was waking back up from sleep immediately when Steam was running. If it's just the display turning on, but the PC otherwise remains asleep, then yeah, Windows won't show anything. Strange case, and in that case I'd just close Steam before using sleep.

[Joburgal]

Not quite, I have the monitor set to turn off after 20 mins and the pc to go to sleep after 2 hours.

With steam open the monitor will turn off at 20 mins and then immediately turns back on again within a few seconds. This in turn prevents sleep mode from kicking in after two hours as well.

Based on this behaviour it’s clear that steam is not keeping the monitor on (as it does turn off momentarily). Just that when the monitor does turn off it immediately triggers the monitor to turn on again.

One thing it could be is that windows update is forcing AlienFX software component driver installs for my Alienware monitor. Every time I uninstall the components windows update triggers them to be installed again (not as an optional update with most drivers). As far as I can tell the components are used to interface with Alienware command centre (to control rgb) which I don’t have installed as it’s just as easy to tweak from the OSD. Maybe AlienFX is connected to steam in some way?

[Carlsberg]

You can disable driver updates in windows 10 and prevent that, it will not affect any other updates.