Wake timers don't wake computer from sleep mode

Question

I'm got a custom built PC running 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate. So far everything works great except for one thing: it will not wake up from sleep mode for a wake timer or scheduled task.

Sleep mode itself works great. If it's sleeping, it wakes successfully when I press the power button, mash the keyboard, wiggle the mouse, or send a WOL packet. The only problem is wake timers. I even tried the program WakeupOnStandBy but it looks like that uses wake timers, so it doesn't do anything for me either.

And yes, wake timers are enabled:

Any ideas on how to fix the problem, or troubleshoot it? I'd imagine that there would be a log somewhere telling me exactly why the wake timers are having trouble, but if there is I haven't found it.

Solution 1

I've struggled with this problem before, and have only been able to do it on one of my PCs.

Some things to try:

• Does your PC have a wake timer feature in the BIOS? If not, it may not be capable of waking up to a schedule.
• Try changing the Bios sleep modes, i.e. S1, S2 etc.
• Also, the one PC I can wake up to a schedule has ACPI 2.0 enabled in the BIOS. (Not sure if that is relevant or not.)

Sorry I can't give you a definitive solution.

Solution 2

I too would advise checking the BIOS like Roh suggested. More specifically, check the power-management options and report the settings, particularly the one that selects whether to use S1 or S3 for standby.

You can also use Microsoft’s power utility to get a dump of Windows’ power-management settings.

Comments

[Joe]

I've found that wake timers work exactly once after a reboot. After that one time, it will wake up fine, but not from a wake timer. I've tried a few little things to try and get them to work more than once: striping the PC down to bare essentials (CPU, MB, Memory, HD), disabling and re-enabling wake timers, changing the system clock, probably others. Nothing has worked so far. Going to see what the MB manufacturer has to say

[Joe]

"And yes, wake timers are enabled."

[cod3monk3y]

"[And a great big image showing such]"

[Pacerier]

Is there even a waketimer in bios? Screenshot?

[staticsan]

I haven't used this in some years, but my previous MythTV PC used it quite well. And since it's in the BIOS, a screenshot will be quite difficult! Also, I seem to recall BIOS screens don't usually call it "wake-timer". But noodle around in the same screens that set the time and date and you should find it.