Windows 'goes to sleep' when left idle or when watching video

[stephen2005]

If I don't move the mouse or keyboard on my PC for about 10 minutes, my system sort of goes to sleep i.e. when I click the mouse or a type on the keyboard, the system is unresponsive until about 30 seconds or so later when the system finally wakes up. I can actually move the mouse around the screen. But I can't click on anything. The screen doesn't switch off, or go blank, or the screensaver kick in (the screensaver is turned off and so are any power saving features). Typically this problem happens when I'm watching a video and try to exit out of full screen mode. When I press control-alt-delete, I am able to wake up the system immediately that way.

I'm wondering if there is any way to prevent this from happening?

 

[Lemon13]

check control panel-power saving (donno the exact english expression, in german "energieoptionen")and check hdd off

 

[stephen2005]

I checked that.

That's what I thought might have been the cause initially.

 

[linney]

Do you see the same behavior if you are not watching a video in fullscreen?

How much RAM does the machine have installed? What amount of that is being used by the video card (64,128.256MB or more)?

What program is running the video, WMP or some other program?

Are there any response if you right-click on the running video screen?

Can you clarify that this is not a Hibernation type problem, as you use terms like "wake" and "sleep", do you mean "hang" and "freeze"?

 

[Lemon13]

and in bios?

 

[vanka25]

(64,128.256MB or more)

Wow, that's a lot of video RAM - 62.62525 GB. Should be able to handle anything you through at it.

 

[stephen2005]

>Do you see the same behavior if you are not watching a video in fullscreen?
Yes

>How much RAM does the machine have installed? What amount of that is being used by the video card (64,128.256MB or more)?
1gig RAM
640MB video RAM - it's a Geforce GTS8800

>What program is running the video, WMP or some other program?
It happens regardless of what program is running. I don't even have to be running anything and it will still 'sleep' while unattended for more than 10 minutes.

>Are there any response if you right-click on the running video screen?
I'll have to get back to you on this as I haven't been able to reproduce the issue

>Can you clarify that this is not a Hibernation type problem, as you use> terms like "wake" and "sleep", do you mean "hang" and "freeze"
The screen doesn't shut off or go blank. A better way of putting it is that the system is unresponsive for about 30sec/1min (unless I hit control-alt-delete to get the keyboard and mouse to respond)

>and in bios?
I'm going to check and let you know what settings are switched on

 

[stephen2005]

Most power management settings are switched off. But under ' Suspend Mode', there are two options:

S1 quickly resume from suspend mode
S3 conserve power settings while suspended (takes longer to resume)

S3 was the option is selected, so I changed it to S1.

However, I don't use suspend or hibernate mode in Windows, so it should be irrelevant anyway.

 

[linney]

If my understanding is correct, and it often is not, you say you have a total of 1GB of RAM (1024MB), of that amount of RAM, your card is using 640MB, leaving Vista to run on 384MB of RAM.

It might benefit from at least 2GB or more of RAM.

Vista - How Much RAM Is Really Enough?

http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2007/03/29/vista-how-much-ram-is-really-enough/

 

[Lemon13]

linney, there is no gforce 8800gts without dedicated ram

stephen, is there anything in event-viewer

 

[stephen2005]

Nothing in the event viewer related to this.

I'm running Windows Vista. I have enough problems already besides introducing Vista to the mix

Funnily enough, the problem hasn't occurred today which may be an indication that it's an intermittant problem. I'll monitor it and see how it goes later on in the day.

 

[linney]

Lemon13", Thank you for pointing the "Dedicated RAM" issue out to me. It is a relief to know that "stephen2005" is not trying to run Vista with 384MB of RAM, still for Vista, 1GB of RAM is a bit low in my opinion.

xp freeze troubleshooting
thread779-935320

PC Freezing - Hard to explain (see details)
thread779-1398265

Windows random hang
thread779-1423743

As you are running Vista you might like to try your luck in the Vista forum too, mind you, my answers wont be any better in that forum either, but somebody else might have a similar Vista experience. Talking of "Experience", what is your rating for "Windows Experience Index"?

http://www.tek-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=1583&page=1

 

[stephen2005]

Thanks I'm working my way through those posts. Strangely enough, the problem still has not re-occurred so far today.

I should also mention that I don't have any AV installed at the moment (previously I had)

Silly me...this was a typo:
"I'm running Windows Vista."

I meant to say I'm *not* running Vista

 

[linney]

Not yet, or never, re Vista?

More to the point, why no AV program, for troubleshooting purposes, yes, but for continual use, no? If it is for troubleshooting then maybe you should look at another AV that uses less resources, or configure your current one to use less resources, possibly via the real time scanning (file types) preferences.


What is the weather (temperature) like there, are you seeing an overheating type of problem?

 

[stephen2005]

Probably never, unless Microsoft stop the security updates. XP does all I need. To upgrade to Vista would require me to splash out on new hardware which is a pointless expense I would rather avoid.

I have found AV programmes to be a pain in the arse. Too many false positives, not detecting some viruses, slowing down my system and products like Nortons trashing my system. If I download something like a crack for an application, I'll just use an online scanner like Trend Micro's house call to check it out. Every few weeks I run a scan of my entire system with the same product just to be sure.

To avoid spyware, I run Firefox + adblock + a custom hosts file. Plus adware and Spybot.


I doubt if it's anything to do with overheating. The Gfx Card runs at 67c and the CPU about 40c.

 

[linney]

As you wish concerning AntiVirus software. I am happy being behind a couple of firewalls and running AVG Free. I do set the preferences so that it doesn't just delete anything it may find but gives me the opportunity to check it out and then probably add it to exceptions.