Windows 10: My PC keeps waking up from sleep. I've already tried unplugging every single USB device.

My PC Windows 11 keeps waking up from sleep. I've already tried unplugging every single USB device both wired and wireless. I've literally unplugged both mouse/keyboard USB dongles as soon as I click sleep so I no longer have any physical input devices. A few seconds later the PC still wakes up.The only thing physically plugged into the PC after going into sleep are the following:C13 Power CordRJ45 Ethernet CableWiFi/Bluetooth Antenna ROG Z690 Hero MotherboardThe only display cables connected to the dedicated GPU are the followingisplay Port Cable to primary monitor always on/standbyDi

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Troubleshooting PCs spontaneously waking from sleep

I've also battled with sleep/wake issues over the years, and from experience have learned that trying to find, or rationalise, the root cause is a waste of time. All you need is `powercfg`.

`powercfg -devicequery wake_armed` from an Administrator PowerShell window/Command Prompt will give you a list of all devices that can possibly wake the PC. This command is interesting because very often, it will show devices that you'd never expect being able to wake your computer. I think in one instance I had the chipset device listed!

`powercfg -devicedisablewake "device_name_from_device_query"`will prevent said device from ever waking the computer. This command is 100% the only thing I have found that will resolve sleep/wake problems. Updating drivers, unplugging peripherals, switching to a cleaner power supply (UPS), changing ethernet cables... none of those have helped, yet`powercfg -devicedisablewake` has done the trick.

Note that occasionally, devices you have disabled wake for may start waking up the PC again - this happens if you plug a USB device into a different port, or occasionally when drivers are updated, because Windows sees it as a new device. In that case rerun `powercfg` to find and disable that device again.

If this does not resolve your wake issues, I would start looking at power fluctuations.

 

PC can't wake from sleep unless I unplug attached USB devices

Hi all,

My computer was working just fine until few weeks ago. When it goes into sleep mode, either by itself, or by pressing the sleep button, it can't wake up like it usually would - hitting the keyboard or moving the mouse. It can't wake up even if I press
the power button or turn the AC supply off and on. The only thing that cause it to come on is if I unplug the USBs that are plugged in. It doesn't just wake up from sleep, but reboots from BIOS.

Most of the time, unplugging the USB Wifi adapter will turn the PC on. But sometimes that doesn't work, I have to unplug the wireless keyboard USB. Rarely, unplugging the thumbdrive does the trick.

When I put it to sleep with all USBs removed, it doesn't go to sleep but reboots immediately.

I've tried updating Windows, updating BIOS, clean boot, sfc /scannow - nothing works.

Under powercfg /systempowerreport, I realize whenever I press sleep, the system goes into Standby, then immediately does an Abnormal Shutdown.

Shutdown and Restart functions are normal.

I do not want to reinstall Windows

 

Troubleshooting PCs spontaneously waking from sleep

First off: I tried disabling wake-up by the mouse on both PCs and disabling USB Selective Suspend too, to no avail.

Thanks, I'll definitely look into that. Good to know that powercfg can list all wake-enabled devices, 'cause when I went through all ... eight-ish PCI-to-PCI bridge devices in Device Manager, none of them had wake events listed (in the "events" tab under Properties), which doesn't quite add up with one/more of them waking the PC a dozen or so times over the last few days. Of course, they don't even have the option to enable/disable waking the PC in the properties menu. I'll take a look at disabling a bunch of stuff through powercfg once I get home from work.

Sorry if I came across as rude, but honestly, your reply did not at all indicate that you'd read my post in the first place. I said I'd been looking at wake-up history in the Windows event log, and I listed several of the devices cited there as having woken up the PC. If you came away with the impression that I hadn't investigated this thoroughly, I suppose I might not have been clear enough, but it's all there in the post. While powercfg does give out some more detail (device IDs and such) than Event Viewer, it only lists the last wake-up, and as such doesn't really help in this instance, as it's clearly not a single device at fault, and tracking wake-ups over time seems more useful. Also, figuring out how to view wake-up events in the Event Log is what you do after you've concluded that powercfg isn't giving you enough information *Wink