Windows 10: Windows 10 sleeps after 3 minutes, no matter what.

This is a summary of what's happening.

1) Clean boot, everything works great. Sleep settings work as intended.
2) Put the computer to sleep manually or automatically.
3) Wakes computer with USB keyboard or mouse, wired or wireless, the computer goes into "system unattended sleep timeout" mode.
4) Your computer will now go to sleep every 2 minutes of inactivity unless you adjust the system unattended sleep timeout from 2 minutes to whatever minutes you wanted. Registry editing required. Directions somewhere in this forum.
5) If you use the power button to wake the computer, the computer will not go into system unattended sleep timeout mode and will work as originally intended.
6) The current fix has flaws. When waken in system unattended sleep timeout mode, the computer thinks it is idle and breaks a few programs. The perceived idling will start idle maintenance tasks like disk optimization, indexing, and virus scanning.
7) Easy way to test this is by installing msi afterburner and use the hardware monitor. When working as intended, the hardware monitor will monitor. If awakened in system unattended sleep timeout mode, the monitoring will freeze in place. If waken with power button, the hardware monitor will continue monitoring and is not in system unattended sleep timeout mode.
8) The real problem is the USB controller.
With the powercfg -lastwake command, this is what it shows-

Instance Path: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_8CB1&SUBSYS_85341043&REV_00\3&11583659&0&A0
Friendly Name: Intel(R) USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller - 1.0 (Microsoft)
Description: USB xHCI Compliant Host Controller
Manufacturer: Generic USB xHCI Host Controller
9) That controller is the real source of the problem. Waking from any usb device will result in system unattended sleep timeout mode. Windows 10 for some reason thinks an usb wake is an unattended wake on lan event. Should be registering as user activity instead.
10) How to fix? We will probably need microsoft to fix the usb issue or possibly get a new driver for the intel usb 3.0.
11)Never had this problem prior to the anniversary update. After upgrading to the anniversary update, this problem occurred and drove me nuts as it shuts off every 2 minutes. Did a clean install with latest windows media creation tool and the problem persists. With this post, I hope somebody more advanced will see this and comes up with a real solution.
12) There is a discrepancy with my theory, if I wake the computer with my xbox one controller with the wireless adapter, the computer wakes normally and every is functional. Afterburner monitor works and is monitoring and no 2 minutes sleeps.
13) Waking in unattended mode, you can use the xbox one controller to exit the mode by simply turning it on. My frozen hardware monitoring resumed it monitoring and the sleep timeout is working as intended. I believe the xbox is sending the computer an user activity signal and brings the system out of unattended mode instantly whereas usb keyboards and mice does not regardless of how many times you press the keys or move the mouse. Can also switch to another user and back and it will exit unattended mode.

 

I agree with MrStinky that the auto-sleep happens after the system has already gone to sleep once and woken up by keyboard/mouse activity. My laptop worked fine until a recent update but it has been Windows 10 from day 1. I will try to wake up using the power button or just do a shutdown and reboot if I can stand that. A fix would be nice.

 

I just stumbled on this from a Google search, I've joined up here in order to belatedly help those still suffering.

1.(just in case) even if your Screensaver is off, you may have a 1(or some such low number) minute timer greyed out.
Reenable, raise sufficiently higher, then disable it.
2.(main culprit) go to control panel /power options /edit plan settings /change advanced power settings /pci express /link state power management
and toggle maximum power savings to moderate OR off.
3. Go thru other hardware listed... hard disk, wireless adapter, display, battery...
and also toggle down any Maximum setting AND raise any minutes timer set lower than your main system Power Saving /Sleep settings.

Enjoy.

 

Then you weren't having the same problem at all since your computer wasn't going to sleep. Completely different issue.

 

BIOS settings have absolutely nothing to do with this issue. Please, nobody follow this advice as it could adversely affect your ability to boot your machine (especially if you don't know what SATA vs ATA or UEFI vs BIOS means).

 

This is an extremely frustrating problem because resetting the power settings to default will always fix it. However, altering the power settings won't immediately cause it to happen again.

I manage 100+ computers at work and none of them have this issue (although my users are probably not tooling around with power settings). I have two machines at home that are exhibiting this issue and neither of them were upgraded from a previous OS. One is a laptop on W10 CU and the other is a desktop (Alienware Alpha that thinks its a laptop) on W10 AU.

I really wish Micro$oft would get their act together.

 

MrStinky has nailed it here. This is exactly what's going on with my desktop. And now that I know what's happening, I almost think it's not such a bad thing. I have all to often woke my PC accidentally by bumping the mouse only to have to log in and tell it to go to sleep again rather than let it waste energy by just timing out on it's own. So I'm thinking that from now on, I'll know to just wake up the PC via the power button instead. Unless I just want to check on something real quick and then allow it to go right back to sleep. So whether this is a flaw or not, I don't know. But I think the function could come in handy after all *Tongue
In the meantime... As far as a fix and what might be going on differently with the mouse or keyboard versus the Xbox controller he mentioned- I'm thinking it might just be a driver problem after all. Maybe it's not letting the system know what kind of device brought the computer out of sleep. Just a thought.