Here's a brief explanation of what we're doing: Using Active Directory's Group Policy, we set our computers to sleep after 3 hours of inactivity. We are then waking up all of these computers at a specific time via Wake On LAN. The utility that we use to send WOL's "magic packet" is EMCO's WakeOnLan utility. That part works just fine, the computers wake up exactly as intended. Our problem is that the computers that we wake up go back to sleep 2 minutes after they've been remotely woken up. According to the event logs (Event ID 42), the reason is "System Idle". I would prefer that the computers don't sleep for another 3 hours after being woken up, so what can I do to reset the sleep timer upon wakeup? Is there a better way to accomplish my goal?

Apparently this has been a problem in past versions of Windows. I happened to find this old article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318355&Product=winxp It basically says that the computer forgets why it woke up, then goes back to sleep. It points to another article that basically says to install all updates. I have a Windows 7 machine that I'm using to test this, and I installed all of the updates (including the optional ones), except for the language packs. Afterwards, I still had the same problem. Any ideas??

Apparently this has been a problem in past versions of Windows. I happened to find this old article: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318355&Product=winxp It basically says that the computer forgets why it woke up, then goes back to sleep. It points to another article that basically says to install all updates. I have a Windows 7 machine that I'm using to test this, and I installed all of the updates (including the optional ones), except for the language packs. Afterwards, I still had the same problem. Any ideas?? **UPDATE** I was able to confirm that Windows doesn't know why it woke up. Event ID 1 in the System log reads: The system has resumed from sleep. Sleep Time: ‎2012‎-‎01‎-‎12T13:23:02.910523800Z Wake Time: ‎2012‎-‎01‎-‎12T13:30:10.968000800Z Wake Source: Unknown

Hi, Regarding the issue, I just wondering whether this problem occurs when you wake up your machine locally? Please use “powercfg –requests” to check which process cause this problem and post the result here.William Tan TechNet Community Support

Hi, Regarding the issue, I just wondering whether this problem occurs when you wake up your machine locally? Please use “powercfg –requests” to check which process cause this problem and post the result here.William Tan TechNet Community Support

Hi Zhen, This problem does not occur when I wake up the machine locally. Here's the results of "powercfg -requests" DISPLAY: None. SYSTEM: [SERVICE] \Device\HarddiskVolume2\Windows\System32\svchost.exe (CryptSvc) AWAYMODE: None.

Looks like I fixed the issue. There are a couple of computers still not cooperating, but for the most part all is well. Here's what I found: First, apparently starting with Vista, Microsoft added a registry key to specify the sleep timeout from an unattended wakeup. The default value of this key is 120 seconds. There's a nice article about it here: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/171042-sleep-return-timeout-unattended-wake-up.html In case that link breaks, here's a brief summary: The key is located here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0\DefaultPowerSchemeValues To change: Balanced: 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e High Performance: 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c Power Saver: a1841308-3541-4fab-bc81-f71556f20b4a The "ACSettingIndex" is for when the machine is plugged in and DC is for running on battery power. Changing the ACSettingIndex for the relevant power plan fixed the problem with most computers. To implement this change, I made a custom Administrative Template (.adm) to use within Group Policy. It's certainly not perfect or infallible, but here it is: CLASS MACHINE CATEGORY "WakeOnLAN" POLICY "Sleep Timer After Remote Wakeup" #if version >= 5 ;Executes if OS is Win XP SP2 or higher (based on version of Group Policy Editor) EXPLAIN !!SettingHelp ;Registry key is applies to the "High performance" power plan. To change the "Balanced" plan use 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e instead of 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c KEYNAME SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0\DefaultPowerSchemeValues\8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c PART "BackToSleepTimeout" NUMERIC VALUENAME "ACSettingIndex" MIN 60 MAX 14400 DEFAULT 3600 SPIN 900 END PART #endif END POLICY END CATEGORY [strings] ; explains SettingHelp="By default, Windows computers are set to return to sleep 120 seconds after a remote wakeup. This Administrative Template facilitates the change of the appropriate registry key. Do NOT set policy to "Disabled." This deletes the registry key."