When my desktop PC is idle for a time, it shuts off. At first, I thought it
was a thermal issue, but the unit doesn’t shut off when it’s being used, even
for extended periods. That led me to think it was a power-management glitch. I
figured that disabling system standby and/or hibernation would work around the
problem, but when I checked the settings, they were already turned off.
Any ideas?
I don’t have anything very specific, but there are a few things I’ll throw
out as places to look and perhaps some items that hadn’t been thought of
yet.
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The first thing that comes to mind is your screen saver. Particularly if
“after a time” is a relatively consistent amount of time. Normally a screen
saver wouldn’t turn the computer off, but a screen saver is software after all,
and could have a bug that’s manifesting on your machine.
This certainly sounds and feels like it could be a standby or hibernation
issue – though if either you’d be able to tell right away when you turn the
computer back on. If it resumes immediately it went into standby, and if it
says “resuming from hibernation” that’s pretty clear. Even if hibernation and
standby are turned off, for a long time I ran into a problem where they would
automagically turn themselves back on.
Another place to look is the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power
Interface) power settings in the BIOS. Power management is, at its root, a BIOS
initiated and managed thing. Perhaps turning that functionality off in the
BIOS, or at least twiddling with the settings there might affect the issue.
There are services that kick in after inactivity. The indexing service is
one (you can turn it off), and in Vista I believe there’s a bunch of defragging
stuff that happens in the background after some idle time. In either of these
or similar cases it’s possible that the service is causing a problem that would
result in the machine shutting down.
In fact, because of the possibility of services kicking in at idle time, it
actually still could be a thermal issue. The services might be driving the
machine harder than you do when you use it normally, and thus the machine might
be experiencing higher temperatures. If it’s something you can watch, try
running process explorer and see if
some application is using up all CPU prior to the machine shutting down.
It certainly wouldn’t hurt to run a RAM
diagnostic anyway.
You might have a look in the event log for anything suspicious. Error
messages or messages of other activity that happen around the time of the
shutdown might throw some interesting light on the situation.
I am not a fan of indexing, which I turned off on my old system, as the sound of my drive working when I’m not irritates me. Imagine my chagrin to discover you are not allowed to turn off indexing in Vista (contrary to the impression Leo gives in the article, above.)
To turn of indexing in Vista:
Open up Services through control panel, or by typing services.msc into the start menu search box. Find “Windows Search” in the list of services and double-click on it to open it.
Change the Startup type of the service to Disabled, and then click the Stop button to stop the service.
At night, I usually put my desktop (XP) into hibernate mode. In the morning, while I wait for it to power back up again, I get bored of waiting so go and make myself some tea. When I come back, it’s powered itself down again. It seems that if there’s a period of inactivity from the point of coming out of hibernation, then it will power down. Once I’ve moved the mouse or pressed a key in the morning, it will never auto-power-down. I’ve tried the suggestions above, but to no avail.
my lenovo think center A61 desktop pc power supply auto shutdown after power on few 5-10mins.
I have some new HP Computers running Vista at 2 sties. 1 site has no problems. On the other site the people say that when working on the computer on a terminal server if they leave for a extend period of time the computer will kick them off of the terminal server and log off.
To Jon Smith: Microsoft, knowing what we need more than we ever could, put in a permanent feature that hibernates your computer five minutes after you bring it out of hibernation, unless you press a key or move the mouse. They reasoned that, since an XP computer can (by default) be brought out of hibernation over the net (how many people even know this?), that this might happen by mistake. In such a case, this five minute feature would actually be useful.
I know of no way to disable this wonderful feature.
i just experianced this exact issue with my computer. Replacing the PSU solved all problems now for 2 weeks.
I defraged my computer by hitting the defrag for the first time on my own in 6 yrs! Yes i am totally illiterate when it comes to computers! Anyway it began to act irratically after this and would go into hybernation constantly. I went in and changed the time for hybernation to 45 min and now, if I am not hitting any keys and am just reading something, it goes to the welcome screen after only 2 minutes. I lost how to get back in to change the minutes.nThe computer wakes up as soon as I hit on my name, but it is getting annoying losing the site I am logged on every 2 minutes. I have a 6 yr old compaq presario # 3000 windows XP. Any suggestions would be so very appreciated!!!!
Thanks!!
Stephanie
i know there is a place to put in length of time before computer shuts down because of no activity. where do i find where i can set the length of time before computer shuts down because of lack of activity. i have my yahoo home page and walk away for ten minutes and i have to put my password in again to get back to my yahoo home. please help.
i know there is a place to put in length of time before computer shuts down because of no activity. where do i find where i can set the length of time before computer shuts down because of lack of activity. i have my yahoo home page and walk away for ten minutes and i have to put my password in again to get back to my yahoo home. please help.