Is this how Windows 7 sleep/hibernation is suppose to work?

[iluvdeal]

I was burning in a new system I built by running Prime95 in Windows 7 Pro (64bit) with the default power settings. I started Prime95 up right before I slept. When I woke up my computer was turned off completely, the power button light was off, etc. I thought the system crashed during Prime95 and shut itself down because of that. So I pressed the power button and the desktop comes back up and Prime95 continues to run again from where it left off. WTF?

From what I can gather, the sleep and hibernation timers are based off of keyboard/mouse input and not system activity. Is that right? I'd actually like to leave the power saving features on so I can reduce my energy usage, but I don't want my PC hibernating if it's doing something like crunching data, scanning for viruses, downloading a file, etc. Once it's done with those tasks though I would like it to hibernate. Is configuring Windows 7 to behave as I described possible or do I just have to disable sleep and hibernate?

 

[MStele]

I'm pretty sure theres a way to configure it to not sleep/hibernate while certain software you choose is running. I personally disable it because my computer is only running when i'm either actively using it or i'm crunching files so I need full performance in both cases, but it might be good to look into it.

 

[JackMDS]

Yeah, WTF is a cure for ignorance.

1. If the Computer came back from short pressing the On/Off, then the computer was Not Off, it was a Sleep and the short press woke it up.

2. Hibernation is some thing else alltogather ( http://www.ezlan.net/standby.html ).

3. Vista and Windows 7 has an extensive setting of energy saving.

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[VirtualLarry]

The power plan defaults to "Balanced", which shuts the PC down into some sort of sleep/hybrid-sleep mode after a time. Set the power plan to "High Performance" and it will stay on.

 

[JackMDS]

There is a specific setting, Never Sleep.

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[iluvdeal]

I know how to disable sleep, that's the not the problem I was asking about.

At the moment I've set my computer profile mode to High Performance so it doesn't sleep, however that doesn't really help me as I would like to leave the power saving features like sleep on, I just don't want it going to sleep if there's system activity. It seems like that's not possible as the timers are user input based, not system activity based. For example you can set the computer to sleep after 20 minutes of no keyboard/mouse activity but not 20 minutes after your download finishes? I guess I'll just have to live with using more electricity.

 

[JackMDS]

You can not expect technology (Yet) to be programed ahead to follow any Human verbal or imaginary desire.

There are additional 3rd party utilities that might have Swich Off upon the termination of their specific action.

I know that there are Download Mangers that can be set to switch Off when dwonload is Done.

Thus first study what Windows native control can do, and then if yoiu have few Action specific needs, search the net using the appropriate term.


Example for, shut off after download

http://www.google.com/search?q=shut+off+after+download&ie=UTF-8

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[iluvdeal]

I actually thought it wouldn't be a big deal for Windows 7 not to sleep if the PC was actively
doing something like number crunching (Prime95 in my case), downloading a huge file, etc. It still seems kind of strange to me for the sleep timer to be based strictly off the last user input on the keyboard/mouse. For example, if your sleep timer is set to 30 minutes and you sit down to watch a 2 hour DVD, would the computer enter sleep mode if there was no input activity after 30 minutes while you are watching the movie?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Computers (especially when idle) use very little power. I have like 3 machines running and I use maybe an average of 100KWH per month in total. That's counting two electric heaters that are on regularly. (one is 4800w set low, the other is only 500)

So I say just disable the power save. I've never seen any power save features actually work properly under windows. I can't speak for vista or 7 as I never played with those so maybe they finally fixed it.