Hello group, MS Windows 7 HP, ver. 6.1.7600 build 7600 HP Pavilion a6045.se. x86 AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual core 3800+, 2000 Mhz. Bios: Phoenix Tech, 5.13, 10/29/2007 3 GB Ram Problem: After downloading the MS Malicious software removal tool and initiating a full scan (which takes about 2-3 hours), I was troubled by the fact that the computer keeps going to sleep in the middle of the scan. During the scan, the hard drive is churning away as you might expect, but that doesn't seem to matter. I ended up having to turn off sleep in power options just to get through the scan, which means that I can't schedule unattended scans unless I want to leave the machine under full power afterwords. Any thoughts on this appreciated. Dave

MS Malicious software removal tool scan is rather boring. Theres nothing to see, Id goto sleep too. =)

Let me add...This is not specific to MRT. This occurs when anything is scanning, such as A/V or whatever. Re-stating the problem would be to say that hard drive activity does not hold focus. The only thing that prevents sleep is mouse or keyboard activity. Is this normal? Dave

Hi Dave, how long does the scanning procedure or defrag keep, more than 30 minutes? If certain application is running at background (such as Defrag) after 30 minutes without user operating, the monitor will be turned off (by using the default setting) but the application is still running until it completes. Then, the hard drive will be turned off and the system enter in Sleep Mode completely. The symptom is by default. If you would like to keep monitoring the status of virus scan, you can set the time longer than 30 minutes.Hope this helps!Sean Zhu - MSFT

Hello Sean, thanks for the response. This problem is not about the monitor turning off, it's about the machine going fully to sleep while the scan is in progress. I have my power options set to shut off the monitor after 10 minutes, and go to sleep after 20 minutes and it does work! The computer goes to sleep after 20 minutes even if a virus scan, malware scan or backup is in progress! I must add that this is new with my installation of Win7. I have had Vista on this computer since I bought it in October 2007 and this problem did not exist. Dave

Hello again Sean (and anyone else interested in this topic), I have discovered the cause of this problem. It is a quite deliberate change that MS made to Vista and win 7 to alleviate the "Hot laptop in a bag" syndrome. Too bad they gave no consideration to people with desktop machines. It is described in this article and a link is given for a work around. http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/p/722/5724.aspx Dave