Force Sleep with programs running

[dahyippur]

I would like to have my pc go to sleep after a few hours regardless of what programs are open. I have a spare maching running windows 8 and people like to walk away from games/login screens without hitting the power button

 

[Pinhedd]

I would like to have my pc go to sleep after a few hours regardless of what programs are open. I have a spare maching running windows 8 and people like to walk away from games/login screens without hitting the power button

It is possible to configure this in the power settings but be warned that running applications can disable it. This is a necessary feature to prevent the PC from going to sleep while it is performing a task that runs without user input such as system maintenance or movie playback.

 

[dahyippur]

Im hoping that if nobody has touched the mouse or keyboard for 2-3 hours the computer is safe to power down. If I need to rerun a defrag or something similar it wouldn't really bother me

 

[dahyippur]

I would like to give this a try but didn't see anything in power settings. Any advice?

 

[Pinhedd]

I would like to give this a try but didn't see anything in power settings. Any advice?

Under power settings, find the active plan, click on "change plan settings", and adjust the "Put the computer to sleep" dropdown menu.

 

[dahyippur]

The problem is that the computer will not go to sleep after when its supposed to because programs/games are open or running in the background. I would like for the pc to ignore any programs and go to sleep after 2-3 hours.

 

[dahyippur]

Can't seem to figure this out, so far none of the options in the power settings will force the computer to sleep while certain programs are open.

 

[johnbl]

most programs will not block sleep functions. there are exceptions but you can override them.
first start cmd.exe as a admin
then run
powercfg.exe /energy

this will make a report file that you can look at and see if you have a program that has permission to block the system from sleeping. A common example will be windows media player, you can then go into control windows power management find the media player and tell it not to block the sleep mode.

main point is the powercfg.exe energy report should list the programs that can block the sleep.
(you can also have programs that wake the computer right after it attempts to sleep and people think the machine did not try to sleep) Common with some network drivers that have stupid wake on LAN settings enable for the driver.
Your machine tries to sleep but another computer on the network keeps talking to it and it wakes up a few seconds later)

 

[dahyippur]

you can then go into control windows power management find the media player and tell it not to block the sleep mode.

This is the part that I'm not getting, I don't see any place in power options where I can do something like this. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place? Are you talking about an option that is specific to WMP? Games are the main culprit here and most dont seem to have any setting to prevent/allow sleep

 

[dahyippur]

I know some programs have a setting that will stop it from preventing sleep mode, but some do not. Any options inside windows or a third party application would probably help here but I'm not having any luck