laptop sleeping question

using only disply blanking, no sleep or hibernate, and manually shutting down W8.1 most evenings is working very nicely. thanks to y'all.

restart in mornings is stupid fast - a few seconds.

ok. i will just set display to blank, and set sleep to never, and maybe every nite or three i will shut it down.

is this a good scheme?

The update will not proceed in "sleep" mode. "Sleep" preserves a particular state for a fast restart, but all user processes cease.

If it is going to "sleep" anyway, then if you want certain processes to run, like a download or an update, you need to change your power management settings so that the computer does not sleep.

If plugged in, it may not be sleeping. Power management has a lot of things to work with between fully active and "sleep." It might shut off the display. It might shut off just the backlight for the display, and let all processes continue running. It might shut down unused ports, or put them into a "wait" or "alert" mode.

I set up my Windows 7 machines to never sleep on external power unless I tell them to sleep, something I do manually (or shut them down) because I don't want them fooling around with background processes.

My Mac machines, I let continue running in their own power saving modes, which involve turning off the display backlight and sending a sleep signal to the UPS, but continuing to run system maintenance and hourly backup tasks, in addition to the apps I leave running (mail, messaging, etc).

I became wary of letting Windows laptops run overnight,n after living in Beijing, where a very long power outage one night let the machine draw on the lithium ion battery long enough to destroy it. It then became my habit to manually shut down my laptops when not in use (sleep still uses power), and put desktop/deskside machines on a UPS, since they are often running some task that takes all cores overnight, or longer, to complete.

There is a lot of flexibility in Windows power management for laptops, particularly if you are plugged in and need not depend on battery life. What seems to be lacking are modes for "complete this task then go to sleep (or shut down)" or "sleep until this needs to be run." But if you have something that needs to be finished unattended, there is definitely a "keep running" mode, which will work until the power goes out and the battery runs down.

strollin wrote:

burlmart wrote:
mine is set to BALANCED and i can see where display and sleep times are set, but nowhere do i find hibernate settings. it currently seems to drift into hibernate from sleep?//

On the list of Power Plans, look to the right of the Balanced plan and click the link "Change plan settings". On the dialog that comes up, near the bottom, click on the link "Change advanced power settings". That will bring up a Power Options dialog with an Advanced Settings tab. Find "Sleep" in the list and click the + next to it, the find "Hibernate after" and click the + next to it. There you can specify how long the laptop will sleep before hibernating or you can turn hibernation off completely.

oh so good, strollin! and thank you all. i never liked pressing power button. i thik i'd rather it sleep and every week or so, i will shut it down via power menu on desktop or metro.

burlmart wrote:
mine is set to BALANCED and i can see where display and sleep times are set, but nowhere do i find hibernate settings. it currently seems to drift into hibernate from sleep?//

On the list of Power Plans, look to the right of the Balanced plan and click the link "Change plan settings". On the dialog that comes up, near the bottom, click on the link "Change advanced power settings". That will bring up a Power Options dialog with an Advanced Settings tab. Find "Sleep" in the list and click the + next to it, the find "Hibernate after" and click the + next to it. There you can specify how long the laptop will sleep before hibernating or you can turn hibernation off completely.

mine is set to BALANCED and i can see where display and sleep times are set, but nowhere do i find hibernate settings. it currently seems to drift into hibernate from sleep?//

Yes you can change settings so it doesn't sleep
I have mine set, not to sleep
When I'm done for the day, I put it in Hibernation , so when I turn it back on I quickly get back to the exact same state of operation
Hibernation shuts down, but remembers everything, it saves all Windows and memory status to a file on the hard drive
So it resumes working right were I left off

burlmart wrote:
mr wizard

are you saying we do not need to let a windows laptop (8.1 in my case) sleep? i am not a fan, so if i can do w/o while not overstressing anything, i'd be happy.

if unused for maybe an hour or so, pressing a key or moving the mouse awakens it.

after a couple hours, my sleeping pc seems to drift to a DEEP sleep and i have to press the power button to wake it.

You can change lots of behaviors of your laptop in Power Options. Right-click on the battery icon in the System Tray (lower right-hand corner) and select Power Options. You'll want to look in the left hand column for the option "Choose when to turn off the display". I have mine set to blank the screen after 10 minutes and never sleep.

The behavior you are seeing is that first, only your display is turned off which requires only a keypress or mouse activity to turn back on. After 1 hour, the laptop goes to sleep (or hibernates) which requires you to press the Power button to awaken it.

mr wizard

are you saying we do not need to let a windows laptop (8.1 in my case) sleep? i am not a fan, so if i can do w/o while not overstressing anything, i'd be happy.

if unused for maybe an hour or so, pressing a key or moving the mouse awakens it.

after a couple hours, my sleeping pc seems to drift to a DEEP sleep and i have to press the power button to wake it.

Thanks! Finally got it updated? Next time I'm going to let it run over night. It basically took all day.