From the Desk of Edison Support – Explaining Why Some PC’s Just Don’t Want to Sleep

In addition to the Power Alley’s postings on current events and product news, we’d like to use this blog as a forum to highlight some of the frequently asked questions (and answers!) we’ve received from Edison users since launch.

Today, we’re explaining why some computers simply will not go to sleep at the time they’ve been set for.

And the answer is…

Edison uses the built-in Windows power management functionality to put your PC and monitor to sleep. Within Windows is a tool called an idle timer which monitors idle activity on your PC and, when the idle timer deems a system idle for a specified amount of time, Windows moves the PC into a lower power state (i.e. sleep mode).

The lack of sleeping – or what we call PC insomnia -- is generally caused by various applications and processes that can reset the idle timer. Some common examples include search archiving, virus scans, backup processes, and interactive web pages. Media applications, when running, are also common examples of items that would keep your computer awake.

Unfortunately, this problem cannot always be solved. However, if you find it happening to you, you can try to close applications that are unnecessarily running on your machine, like a media player.

For the enterprise environment, Verdiem SURVEYOR solves this issue by instituting a separate idle timer that better monitors and controls sleep settings, ensuring PCs always go to sleep as directed.