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There are many posts about the display not sleeping when idle. It will not turn off after inactivity, neither from the desktop, nor from the lock screen. I've tried everything!? This is on a PC (not laptop) running Windows 10 Pro.

  • Power & sleep settings (both AC and battery/DC)
  • Enabled VIDEOCONLOCK via registry and set it explicitly to different values (under Power/Display)
  • powercfg: restored schemas, /requests show nothing blocking display, set schema values via CLI
  • Switched Lock Screen Settings to Slideshow to toggle off "show lock instead of turning off the screen" and then back to Spotlight
  • Used DDU to uninstall all video drivers, and reinstalled the latest Nvidia ones using "clean" install
  • Used DSIM and sfcscan
  • Tried multiple screen saver settings

Does anybody have any other suggestion besides the "normal" recommendations as listed above?

SOLUTION: See my own answer below, but it was the combination of USB joystick plugged in AND Nvidia Geforce Experience overlay enabled. With either unplugged/disabled or both, sleep works again.

TechieJ
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11 Answers11

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It turned out to be a combination of 2 things (together).

  1. Joystick USB devices plugged in (in my case Thrustmaster HOTAS)
  2. Nvidia Geforce Experience overlay enabled

If I either unplugged (1) or disabled (2) or both, display/sleep works again.

TechieJ
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10

As you alluded to in your original post, this is a useful command to run in an administrator command prompt:

powercfg /requests

It will list any devices that are currently preventing the device from sleeping. I know in your case it wasn't showing anything helpful. But for others it may list something.

In my case it was listing my audio driver, meaning an app was playing some kind of audio and stopping Windows from sleeping. I then followed the steps in this answer to use Process Explorer to debug what app that might be and eventually found it.

Hope that helps someone else out there.

Simon E.
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No mention if this is a laptop or not. I'm going to assume it is due to the "battery/DC" comment you made about Power & sleep settings.

What I do is none of that. I just set the power button to turn off the display when pressed and then manually turn it off when I walk away:

  1. Open Control Panel
  2. Power Options
  3. On the left panel: "Choose what the power buttons do"
  4. "When I press the power button:" -> "Turn off the display"

This isn't fool-proof; if someone hits a key or knocks the mouse (heck, even if the table vibrates by someone walking past it!) the display will wake back up.

All that said, unless you absolutely need the computer to stay on 24/7, just turn it off when you aren't using it.

...and if it does need to stay on 24/7, why is a laptop being used in the first place?

For a desktop the situation is the same: Just turn the monitor off.

Casey
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well for me it was the gamepad and also daemon tools and steam clients. once i closed steam and daemon tools the monitor was sleeping after 1 minute. so check what is open on your PC tray. hope it will help you.

Shay Michaeli
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Having the Steam client open can cause this behavior, even without any controller connected to the system. Possibly related to Steam overlay, but cannot be sure.

Usually, restarting the application will usually (not always) fix the problem and might not prevent the monitor going into standby on the next timeout, so it is best to close Steam if away from the computer for extended period and want your monitor to enter standby.

Running powercfg -requests does not show anything related to Steam, yet closing the client allows the monitor to enter standby.

To quickly test without waiting for the timeout, setup your power button to "Turn off the display" in Control Panel.

Found this problem on 3 different computers so far.

user3779756
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1

I was trying to fix this for months trying everything on here and elsewhere. In the end it was that my lock screen background was set to slideshow. Changing it to a static picture did the trick.

Settings -> Lock Screen -> Background: Picture [was Background: Slideshow]

user2909236
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I found out today, that on my rig (win10 pro, 3900x, rx480) the problem wasn't even the pads or anything else connected, it was the difference between setting it up in power options > edit plan settings and going to "change advanced power settings" window. first option had no effect, but when went to that oldschool power management window and set the time there, it worked without an issue.

Xami
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My displays wouldnt sleep anymore. Turns out it was in fact a usb game controller preventing it.

Test Profi
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I realized that the automatic "turn off display after..." (nor screensaver) do not work on my laptop ONLY when internet is cutted (no problem when connected to internet).

Guilty is my VPN service, which seems to not be consider as inactive by win10 when laptop is disconnected from internet: when I manually stop this service, all works fine

To workaround, I have created a manual bat file which permits in 1 click to run a low-energy screen saver + logon password asked at exit.

  1. a notepad file populated with:
    @start /wait %windir%\system32\Mystify.scr /s & rundll32 user32.dll,LockWorkStation
  2. saved as "runScreenSaver.bat" into C:\Windows
  3. then a shortcut of this .bat, named "run ScreenSaver"
  4. then open the properties of said batch file, click on "Change Icon" of this shortcut with the one downloaded from: https://iconarchive.com/download/i24399/mattahan/buuf/Screensaver.ico
  5. then copy/move this shortcut into C:\Users\Public\Desktop, an also a copy into the Quick Launch
DarkDiamond
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Robert
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Another possible culprit is USB Selective Suspend Setting

Disable like this:

Start > Settings > Power & Sleep > Additional Power Settings > Change Plan Settings > 
Change Advanced Power Settings > USB Settings > USB Selective Suspend Setting 
> Set to Disabled

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-screen-wont-turn-off-after-specified/51ede8de-2899-4d0c-a5cb-a45529396d2b

Ogglas
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My problem was with AMD Adrenaline Edition, disabling instant replay (under record and streaming > instant replay) was the solution for me. After trying different thing (like energy consuption settings ecc...) i brought those settings back to default and pc still went to sleep. hope this helps

Alpha Fire
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