Why does my monitor power off despite my power plan telling it not to?

Question

I am developing a web thin-client for an information kiosk running Win7. I make sure the screen saver is turned OFF and the "Turn off display" setting is set to NEVER.

After I leave the kiosk for part of the day (have not measured exactly how long... I am in classes and meetings) I return to find the video card to our projectors has turned off, defaulting to "no signal" displayed at the kiosk. (less than desirable)

After kicking the mouse, the display turns back on and I look to find the Turn Off Display Setting has reset to "15 min".

I've seen similar questions having problems NOT shutting off according to the power plan. This problem is the opposite... Display shuts off, ignoring the power plan.

Thoughts?

Solution 1

Heard back from our IT guys...

Our computing labs have a refresh policy that resets display properties and power plans in case students modify. With hundreds of computers across campus, it saves a wad of energy to have them power down when not being used.

So for folks experiencing a similar mystery, check with your administrator for group policies that reset or refresh power plans across the network.

Solution 2

This Microsoft Support article may explain this mystery:

The "Turn off the display" setting may change unexpectedly when you configure the "Put the computer to sleep" setting in Windows Vista :

the Turn off the display setting is automatically set to the next shortest value when you configure the Put the computer to sleep setting.

Catch 22: This means that whenever you set the Put the computer to sleep setting to Never, the Turn off the display setting is changed automatically by Windows to a shorter time-period.

Solution:

To work around this behavior, set the Turn off the display setting to the value that you want, and then click Save Changes.

and, of-course, do not touch Put the computer to sleep afterward.

Solution 3

HD Tune can also produce similar results by resetting the monitor's power setting. Version 4.5 (Pro only I think) added a way to deselect this feature. In options under the "General" category, uncheck "Allow change of power settings during tests".

Comments

[Sal]

Thanks for the suggestions! I looked into the support article, and that does not look like the problem. In a fit of inspiration, I decided to create a New Power Plan called "Kiosk" with the settings I need. 15 min later, the system had switched back to the "High Performance Plan" and shut down the monitors. -- So looks like a Power Plan switching problem... ugh...

[harrymc]

@williamlweaver: You should have stated from the beginning that you were in a domain environment. GP is most probably the source of the problem.

[Brad Patton]

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