How to Prevent Your Computer from Randomly Going to Sleep

Windows 10 has a sleep function that saves power by putting your device to sleep when it’s not in use. This function turns off your monitor, which can help prevent screen burn and save electricity. In most cases, it works as it should. However, sometimes your computer may go to sleep too early or at random intervals. Today, I will show you how to fix this issue.

Windows has a Control Panel section dedicated to sleep, where you can configure it in various ways. The default power plan, called Balanced, should work fine for most users. Unless you need to turn off your hard disks or USB ports, you shouldn’t have to make any changes.

Control Your Computer’s Sleep Settings

To control how and when your computer goes to sleep, you can access the Control Panel and make some adjustments. Random sleep intervals are usually caused by a setting within the Control Panel, rather than a hardware issue. Overheating would cause a shutdown, and a Windows error would result in a crash or freeze. In most cases, it’s a configuration problem if your computer is going to sleep at random times.

Here are a few ways to fix the issue:

Check Your Power Plan

The first step is to check your power plan configuration and see how long the idle interval is set for sleep. If the timer is set too short, we can easily adjust it.

1. Right-click the Windows Start button and select Settings.
2. Click on Power & sleep.
3. Check the Sleep timer in the right pane.

If the timer is set too short, change it in the radio menu and test again. If it’s set to a long duration or never, move on to the next step.

Restore the Default Power Settings

If you upgraded to Windows 10 from another operating system, such as an earlier version of Windows, there may be a miscommunication between the two systems when it comes to power settings. Even if the settings look fine on the surface, Windows 10 might still be using the old power plan instead of the new one. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix for this.

1. Open Power & sleep as mentioned before.
2. Click on Additional Power Settings under Related Settings.
3. Click the text link that says “Restore Default Settings For This Plan”.
4. Confirm your selection by clicking Yes in the popup window.

This will reset your power plan to its default settings, allowing you to overwrite the old plan with a new one in Windows 10.

Configure a New Power Plan

Whether you tried the previous option or not, changing the power plan can often reset Windows 10 to follow the new settings properly. Even a single change can make Windows pay attention to your desired sleep settings and use the power plan correctly.

1. Open Power & sleep.
2. Click on Additional Power Settings under Related Settings.
3. Click on the text link that says “Change Advanced Power Settings”.
4. Make any desired changes to the plan and click OK.

Some key settings to modify would be the hard disk timeout or USB timeout. If you’re a gamer, disabling PCI Express Link State Power Management could be helpful. Once you’ve made the changes, test your computer again. It should no longer go to sleep randomly.

Turn Off Hybrid Sleep

Hybrid Sleep, which combines the Hibernate mode of Windows 7 and 8 with sleep mode, was a good idea in theory. However, it often caused problems in practice and interfered with normal sleep mode. Therefore, we can try disabling it.

1. Open Power & sleep.
2. Click on Additional Power Settings under Related Settings.
3. Click on the text link that says “Change Advanced Power Settings”.
4. Select Sleep in the Advanced Settings window.
5. Set Allow Hybrid Sleep to Off.
6. Verify that the Sleep After setting matches your power plan.
7. Click OK to save the settings.

After making these changes, test your computer and see if the problem is resolved.

Change Registry Settings to Prevent Random Sleep

If all else fails and your computer is still ignoring the sleep timer, we can try modifying the registry to reconfigure the sleep timer. This method overrides any conflicting settings from the power plan.

1. Press the Windows key + R.
2. Type ‘regedit’ and press Enter.
3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\7bc4a2f9-d8fc-4469-b07b-33eb785aaca0.
4. Double-click on Attributes and change the value to 2.
5. Open Power & sleep.
6. Click on Additional Power Settings under Related Settings.
7. Click on the text link that says “Change Advanced Power Settings”.
8. Select “Change Settings That Are Currently Unavailable”.
9. Select Sleep and then System.
10. Set the System Unattended Sleep Timeout to 20 minutes or longer.
11. Click OK to save the changes.

If none of these solutions work, I’m not sure what else will! Reach out to a computer technician for further assistance.

If none of these solutions work, I’m not sure what else will! Reach out to a computer technician for further assistance.