[ncann]

Troubleshooting sleep is an exercise wrapped in pain.

Figuring out which program prevents sleeping is the easy part - there are tools that show that, and you can also usually just brute force it by killing programs one by one.

Then comes figuring out why a system claims to be sleeping but isn't (e.g. the fan is still spinning). Usually this is because of the Modern Standby/S0 crap and in many cases there isn't a solution because the BIOS removed support for S3.

The other class of issue is after sleeping the system won't wake up, or wake up randomly, or wake up with random glitchy graphics/sounds/etc.

Sleep is easily Windows's most bug-ridden area.

[jchw]

As a long-time Linux user, it's also a pretty damn buggy area of Linux, although I have been much more fortunate with getting hardware that works decently enough with sleep on Linux over the years than some people have.

The main benefit of Linux, though, even though it's pretty clear it doesn't have the best support for suspend/resume, is that it won't yield the resume function against you to force you to run Windows Update and yeet all of the stuff you've been working on overnight or light your bag on fire. You'll still have to get hardware that works well, but that's it. And.. and hope the AMD driver doesn't break suspend again. I actually do like running Linux, even if it might be hard to tell sometimes :)

[nine_k]

As a long-time laptop Linux user, I'd say that "suspend to RAM" is adequate lately, and booting from scratch is paradoxically often faster than restoring from sleep, even on an NVMe.

[The_SamminAter]

I believe the AMD sleep issue was just fixed, and is available in 6.14: https://nyanpasu64.gitlab.io/blog/amdgpu-sleep-wake-hang/

[AndrewDavis]

> Usually this is because of the Modern Standby/S0 crap and in many cases there isn't a solution because the BIOS removed support for S3.

Also, modern windows won't let you select S3 sleep if it detects support for S0. There used to be a simple registry edits you could do but Microsoft seem to have closed that loophole.

I chose my current laptop because in the BIOS it has a sleep setting, and if you pick the oddly named "Linux sleep" it disables S0 sleep. Thereby allowing S3 sleep in Windows.

This is after having a previous laptop act like a heater to my lunch in my bag, or being dead despite being full charged after waking up overnight and running hard till the battery ran out. Or perhaps the most obnoxious, my wife closing her laptop with a video running and at 3am her laptop bringing itself to life waking us up.

[Aardwolf]

> There used to be a simple registry edits you could do but Microsoft seem to have closed that loophole.

Why? I mean, what incentive does MS have to say "people are still trying to use the non-buggy sleep that doesn't cause fires, let's close the loophole to force using the buggy sleep"?

[taneq]

I’ve had ongoing problems with my new laptop either not sleeping properly or waking up randomly in my backpack and toasting itself until it shuts down with a critical overtemp error. My solution is to set the power button to hibernate, and just press the power button if I expect it to be in my bag for more than 15 minutes.

[fodkodrasz]

The most annoying crap with modern sleep is that it doesn't lock the computer, only after some time has elapsed in sleep. I want the computer be locked immediately. Also Keepass cannot hook the sleep event, and lock the database. This is a security nightmare for me, really inconvenient.

Other is that the slightest mouse movement wakes the computer. Disabling wake devices does not work anymore. Guides say disable it in your bios. If there is a configuration option... I don't have (neither on a Lenovo, nor on a Beelink) such option. (Yes, I did the powercfg -wake-armed/device manager rain-dance, to no avail, it worked reliably to configure wake sources on S3)

S3 sleep was good enough for me, and S0 is a large step back in reliability and usability, for no perceived benefit. Unfortunately my newer machine does not support S3 anymore.

With MS copying all the bad ideas from MacOS it is getting ever worse, slowly Windows (being my get stuff done desktop) becoming as unusable my Mac. (ps. I'm was a long time, 10+ years, Linux desktop user, but constant flux of the platform made me move away)

[7bit]

I use Hibernation instead of Standby. I have an SSD so the difference boils down to maybe 10 seconds. Which is time I do have :)

[ryandrake]

> The other class of issue is after sleeping the system won't wake up

The last company where we used Windows, we'd all walk around from conference room to conference room carrying our laptops opened up, because nobody was sure they would work again without a hard reboot if you closed the lid.

[vikingerik]

Did anyone try the setting for "when laptop lid closes" set to "do nothing"? I've always used that on a half dozen Windows laptops over the years and never seen it not work. Even if sleep is finicky, that will just make it stay fully running. If you want it to sleep, do that separately from the start menu or whatever, don't tie the sleep state to the lid state.

[vo2maxer]

I’ve never had an issue finding the source. I usually run powercfg /lastwake in an admin terminal, then follow up with Event Viewer. Most recently, it was HP Print Scan Doctor waking the computer during the night.

[Dennip]

My PC if put to sleep will completely randomly just wake up in the middle of the night. Its infuriatingly annoying to figure out why/which app is causing it as its not easily reproducible

[vo2maxer]

Here’s a surprisingly thorough and reasonable checklist—considering the source: https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/stop-your-computer-from-randoml...

[izacus]

sigh Yeah, I'm just battling with the fact that Win11 just won't sleep anymore after I updated the wifi card to a new one. It *claims* to sleep in sleep study, but the power indicator doesn't go out, the disk activity doesn't stop and the battery trains in couple of hours.

It's infuriating.

[fuzzfactor]

Try booting in admin safe mode, looking in Device Manager, Show Hidden Devices, and manually uninstall the phantom old wifi device that's not really there any more.

No guarantees but that's what I would do before expecting great progress otherwise.

The theory is that Windows is lying awake at night wondering if their old familiar accomplice is going to ever be seen again or not ;)

[NL807]

>because the BIOS removed support for S3.

i hate this so much