Found a program preventing the computer from sleeping!

I never had a mouse jigger but we used to set our mouse on a stopwatch and the second hand movement keep it awake.

You're going about it completely wrong! All you need is to put a "mouse jiggler" in your USB port. Done! When you want the computer to back to sleep or screen saver, simply unplug it. It mimicks the mouse moivng, sends a "ping" to the computer about ever 10 seconds. I use one on my work computer when I need to keep my laptop from going to sleep.

You can find these at pretty much any office store and everywhere on-line, even Amazon.

click here

Naio wrote:
Those windows settings don't always work. Depends on what version of windows you have. XP might be ok, but, on the newer versions of windows you can select 'never sleep' all you want but the computer will still sleep.

Umm. No, not correct.

I just double checked one of my Win7 machines..

Win7 gives you MANY MORE "options" in the power settings than XP, some options DEPEND on you setting OTHER "options" correctly in order to stop all the power savings sleep modes.

XP was much simpler but in simpler you had less options for tweeking. Win7 and above the multitude of options allows for some fine tuning..

What the problem is, the power settings are a lot harder to FIND in Win7 and up, they are buried and not where one would expect.

While one could use a third party software to turn off power savings modes (easy) it is not necessary if you are not lazy and willing to kick some Windoze settings tires along the way (a bit harder)..

Naio wrote:
on the newer versions of windows you can select 'never sleep' all you want but the computer will still sleep.

and this is how yours acts? I guess a third party program is fail safe??

Those windows settings don't always work. Depends on what version of windows you have. XP might be ok, but, on the newer versions of windows you can select 'never sleep' all you want but the computer will still sleep.

I use a freebie called DontSleep. I put an icon in the taskbar so it's easy to activate. It also has a number of parameters you can set to customize its behavior.

I run my DELL INSPIRION Laptop power option to stay powered up always when on AC and goes to sleep after 15 minutes when on battery... Same with my monitor power options...

Having said this I am now experiencing a strange WIN 10 power down situation that has just started where I can normally use the control panel SHUT DOWN mode using the KEYBOARD and both Computer and Monitor will completely shut down but now my single power light on the LAPTOP stays ON (All other lights goes OFF).

My LAPTOP is normally always lid closed and I am using external MONITORS and KEYBOARD etc.. I also have the laptop sitting on a fan tray under the laptop which is plugged into a USB port. This remains on now until I raise the lid and push the power button on the laptop down for a short period of time. The single POWER light also goes out when I do this routine.

I re-did and saved all of my LAPTOP Power options but didn't help this strange shut-down procedure.

I kinda hate to shut down any computer using the POWER BUTTON as something may still be running in the background. I like using the SHUT DOWN mode from the CONTROL PANEL which will tell me if something is running in the background and will shut down automatically after it has completed.

This happened after one of the WIN 10 upgrade events I think... I run ADVANCED SYSTEM CARE and ANTI MALWARE every few days...

Everything seems all NORMAL and FAST operating...

Roy Ken

It's really an easy few settings to keep Win XP (or any version of Windows for that matter) awake all the time. As stated Control Panel > Power Settings. No third party apps needed. We do this all the time for data acquisition systems used for work testing....

Cnet has two programs called Caffeine, both claim to do the same thing, but the user ratings are different. Which one are you referring to?

You can't do that in Control Panel.. power options?