Why is Windows 11 practically shutting down overnight everynight?

[consptheory77]

I recently build myself a new desktop system: 13600K on MSI MAG Z790 with Win11 Pro and 3080 GPU

The system is about a month old, the GPU was installed maybe a week ago. What has been happening is that I run my desktop 24-7, always have, and I have set the Power Options on this desktop to never sleep, and the monitor to turn off after five minutes of inactivity. This seems fine in the day, both when I am home and when I am away (as I am often streaming from Plex while away from home), even before I go to bed, but whenever I get up in the morning, the system is unresponsive, that is, moving the mouse or typing the keyboard does not turn the monitor back on, the monitor does not detect the OS, but clearly the system is still powered on, the power button is lit up, the GeForce logo is lit up, the fans are spinning. But I have to press the power button to reboot the computer to get it into a working state again.

I suspect three possible causes:
(a) Windows Update broke something, particularly because I foolishly signed up at install for Insiders Program, so they're giving me the beta updates
(b) Nvidia drivers have altered something
(c) MSI BIOS is not managing the C-states correctly I am overclocked but I did not mess with that setting.

I'm not going to do the drastic step of resetting Windows
There is perhaps the intermediate step of going to a restore point
but if this sounds like a familiar problem to anyone, and can be resolved by an alteration of a setting, I'd prefer to do it that way

 

[white.a.drew]

I recently build myself a new desktop system: 13600K on MSI MAG Z790 with Win11 Pro and 3080 GPU

The system is about a month old, the GPU was installed maybe a week ago. What has been happening is that I run my desktop 24-7, always have, and I have set the Power Options on this desktop to never sleep, and the monitor to turn off after five minutes of inactivity. This seems fine in the day, both when I am home and when I am away (as I am often streaming from Plex while away from home), even before I go to bed, but whenever I get up in the morning, the system is unresponsive, that is, moving the mouse or typing the keyboard does not turn the monitor back on, the monitor does not detect the OS, but clearly the system is still powered on, the power button is lit up, the GeForce logo is lit up, the fans are spinning. But I have to press the power button to reboot the computer to get it into a working state again.

I suspect three possible causes:
(a) Windows Update broke something, particularly because I foolishly signed up at install for Insiders Program, so they're giving me the beta updates
(b) Nvidia drivers have altered something
(c) MSI BIOS is not managing the C-states correctly I am overclocked but I did not mess with that setting.

I'm not going to do the drastic step of resetting Windows
There is perhaps the intermediate step of going to a restore point
but if this sounds like a familiar problem to anyone, and can be resolved by an alteration of a setting, I'd prefer to do it that way

It's Windows sleep /hibernate state. The program they wrote to control it is bugged beyond bugged and cause more system to crash then work properly. And in most case it generally crashes after 3-4 hrs of inactivity in sleep mode I don't understand it myself but if you go through every post involving sleep this is the issue you will find the sleep hibernate state of windows is broke

 

[bacca400]

Another PC builder said they always disable sleep, especially on Windows systems, because it's buggy.

In my case my HP Omen 30L would not come out of sleep, or rather the monitor would not wake up after a Windows update in March 2023. I updated the BIOS and it seems to be working now, at least it worked from my 2 tests. This might help. https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gamin...es-not-wake-up-from-sleep/td-p/8137336/page/2

 

[consptheory77]

I believe the problem was, partly, "System unattended sleep timeout".

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials...nded-sleep-timeout-power-options-windows.html

Once I set this hidden setting to 'zero', I do not appear to have the problem with the monitor being unable to wake up, i.e., I actually turned the sleep function to off, because setting it to off normally through power options does not actually do so.

However, the other part of the problem: it still reboots every night, and I can only attribute that to the "Security Intelligence Update for Microsoft Defender Antivirus". I assume I'm getting so many because I opted for Windows Insider, and I opted to automatically receive all Windows updates, and Windows updates Defender definitions every night.

I think there used to be an option in previous versions of Windows to manually install all updates, but in Win 11 it seems you can either choose to have it done automatically after the install, or pick a dormant window for your desktop, but it will reboot your system either way.

I'm going to turn off "automatic updates for other Microsoft products" and see if that resolves the other half of the problem.

 

[bacca400]

I don't think you can completely turn off Win 11 updates, at least via the control panel. You might have to change some registry entries. I think this changed in Windows 10.

 

[Ralston18]

Look in Reliability Monitor/History and Event Viewer.

Both tools capture error codes, warnings, and even informational events related to system activitites and actions.

Reliability Monitor uses a time line format and is much more user friendly.

Event Viewer requires more time and effort to navigate and understand.

FYI:

How To - How to use Windows 10 Event Viewer | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com)

My suggestion is to work with both tools for a few days to 1) become familar with the tool, and 2) get a sense of what the logs are telling you about your system.

Look for patterns, unknown or unexpected software running in the background, software being launched at startup via Task Manage > Startup or even later triggered to run via Task Scheduler.

Any entries that references Windows updates and/or Windows Defender may prove helpful.

Likewise Update History: failed or problem updates of any sort should be checked.

 

[consptheory77]

Long story short: when I eliminated everything else, the problem turned out to be the overclocking. I simply reverted back to stock settings, I haven't had a shutdown since, it's been running 24/7 without a hitch, wakes up from sleep no problem. It seems odd that it would only choose to produce an issue when the system was left on overnight, but in any case, I don't plan on trying to overclock again, 14 cores is a sufficient enough upgrade from the overclocked 4 core system I had been using.