Computer Will Not Stay in Sleep Mode

[DemonDragonJ]

I recently started using a new computer, one with a solid-state drive instead of a traditional hard drive (and, as a side note, I cannot believe that I waited for so long to make that transition), and, since hibernation is not an option for it, I put it into sleep mode when I am not using it but do not wish to shut it down completely.

However, several times, now, it has awakened itself from sleep mode, which is very annoying, because I do not wish to waste electricity or put unnecessary strain on its components. I have been able to prevent it from doing so by turning off the manual switch on the power supply, but that is annoying and should not even be necessary, so does anyone here have any advice on how I can stop my computer from awakening itself? Thank you very much.

[DemonDragonJ]

I looked elsewhere online, and discovered that the most likely reason is that my computer's network adapter is causing the computer to awaken from sleep mode, so I disabled that feature, and I now no longer have that problem.

[Airbozo]

Good catch!

You can modify the settings of the adapter or protocol (forget which) to ignore any pings not intended for the adapter to initiate a wake signal. if it is an onboard NIC the setting may be in BIOS.

BTW: Some people would argue that powering on and off the computer casues more strain on the componenets than leaving it on. I'm 50/50 as i shut down my destop systems and leave the servers to enter sleep mode.

EDIT: I used to have my server wake the desktops to do backups, but I couldn't find a way to shut them back off.

[Konrad]

BTW: Some people would argue that powering on and off the computer casues more strain on the componenets than leaving it on. I'm 50/50 as i shut down my destop systems and leave the servers to enter sleep mode.
I've read numerous "studies" and analyses about this topic.

Cycling surge power is indeed a little rough on your computer - mostly on the PSU and on all the power regulation hardware (including motherboard VRMs, GPU VRMs, and CPU/MCU FIVRs), but also on all NVRAM (firmwares, mobo BIOS, SSDs) and on pretty much everything else right down to fans and LEDs and PCB trace substrates. It's not terribly harmful but switching it on/off does strain the hardware each time, switching it on/off many times in succession (especially without any "cool down" time between power cycles) strains it a little more, the wear and tear all adds up over years of regular (ab)use. Modern PCs (and modern silicon chips) incorporate lots of extra power hardening, little diodes and caps on pretty much every pin of every part that matters, increased tolerances add stability and reliability and longevity, but they aren't really designed to endure "heavy" sustained/repeated electrical abuse.

The surge power also consumes more electricity. Especially when everything spins up or "wakes up" or activates or otherwise cycles through the usual power-up boot/initiatialization procedures.

But pressing OFF/ON (or RESET) a number of times each day is really no big deal. Component life basically degrades by an insignificant amount. Extra electrical consumption hardly adds up to a penny.

The usual verdict on these "studies" is that good practice is to leave your computer powered on if you plan to come back to it within the next few hours, but power it off whenever you're done using it for (most of) the rest of the day. They basically found that large corporate deployments (lots of machines in an office or whatever) should be turned on at the beginning of the workday and turned off at the end of the workday and turning them off/on more often than that (like, say, at lunch and other breaks) essentially didn't didn't accelerate hardware EOL in the vast majority of instances.

...

Congrats on moving from HDD to SDD! I resisted the change for years as well. NVRAM starts continually degrading from the first moment you use it. But then again, even degraded SDDs are still phenomenally faster than HDDs, and MTBF/MTTF longevity ratings for today's SDDs generally exceed those of HDDs.

[DemonDragonJ]

You can modify the settings of the adapter or protocol (forget which) to ignore any pings not intended for the adapter to initiate a wake signal. if it is an onboard NIC the setting may be in BIOS.

BTW: Some people would argue that powering on and off the computer casues more strain on the componenets than leaving it on. I'm 50/50 as i shut down my destop systems and leave the servers to enter sleep mode.


Cycling surge power is indeed a little rough on your computer - mostly on the PSU and on all the power regulation hardware (including motherboard VRMs, GPU VRMs, and CPU/MCU FIVRs), but also on all NVRAM (firmwares, mobo BIOS, SSDs) and on pretty much everything else right down to fans and LEDs and PCB trace substrates. It's not terribly harmful but switching it on/off does strain the hardware each time, switching it on/off many times in succession (especially without any "cool down" time between power cycles) strains it a little more, the wear and tear all adds up over years of regular (ab)use. Modern PCs (and modern silicon chips) incorporate lots of extra power hardening, little diodes and caps on pretty much every pin of every part that matters, increased tolerances add stability and reliability and longevity, but they aren't really designed to endure "heavy" sustained/repeated electrical abuse.

The surge power also consumes more electricity. Especially when everything spins up or "wakes up" or activates or otherwise cycles through the usual power-up boot/initiatialization procedures.

But pressing OFF/ON (or RESET) a number of times each day is really no big deal. Component life basically degrades by an insignificant amount. Extra electrical consumption hardly adds up to a penny.

The usual verdict on these "studies" is that good practice is to leave your computer powered on if you plan to come back to it within the next few hours, but power it off whenever you're done using it for (most of) the rest of the day. They basically found that large corporate deployments (lots of machines in an office or whatever) should be turned on at the beginning of the workday and turned off at the end of the workday and turning them off/on more often than that (like, say, at lunch and other breaks) essentially didn't didn't accelerate hardware EOL in the vast majority of instances.

I wonder about that, myself; I used to believe that it was better to leave a car running than to turn it off and then on again, but I have heard that it actually uses more gasoline when idling than for its initial starting up, so I presume that the same is true with computers and electricity. The same is true with light bulbs, as well, especially now that LED's are becoming commonplace; they use more power when left on for an extended duration than they do during their initial startup.


Congrats on moving from HDD to SDD! I resisted the change for years as well. NVRAM starts continually degrading from the first moment you use it. But then again, even degraded SDDs are still phenomenally faster than HDDs, and MTBF/MTTF longevity ratings for today's SDDs generally exceed those of HDDs.

Yes, I am very impressed with the increased performance, and I am very glad that I made that transition; I hope to eventually replace all of the hard drives in the computers in my house with solid-state drives.

[Konrad]

HDDs still have one major advantage: price per (Giga)Byte.

System/boot drive should always be on SSD for performance. Commonly used apps/games should be installed to SSD for maximum performance. Even nasty cache/temp/swap stuff should go onto SSD for maximum performance, it's more wear and tear on the NVRAM but will have little impact on any (but the very cheapest and most disposable) SSD after years of use. And Moore's Law still applies here (in spirit) ... SSDs keep getting bigger and smaller and faster and denser and better and cheaper every year.

Stored or archived data (documents, music, video, photo, etc) don't require and don't really benefit from (SSD-like) fast access. And they tend to add up to lots of space. Can't beat the bang for the buck on HDDs for this stuff, why have 512MB super-fast storage when you can get 4TB fast-enough storage for the same price?

[OvRiDe]

EDIT: I used to have my server wake the desktops to do backups, but I couldn't find a way to shut them back off.

If you have never seen NirCmd its a good one for the arsenal. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

Depending on what your using for back up, if it has a provision to run a script on complete you can put this in there...

"nircmd.exe standby"

I am in the 24/7 camp. I leave my machine on all the time, but I do have it power down the monitors which also shuts off my keyboard lights (razer chroma). I have one of the macro keys on the keyboard set to run "nircmd.exe monitor off", so when I step away, I just press the M1 key.

NirCMD has a ton of functionality in it, which can come in very handy. You should definitely check it out.