Advanced troubleshooting for Standby issues

Introduction

Standby issues on Windows laptops can be frustrating, but there are advanced troubleshooting methods available to help isolate or resolve them. In this article, we will focus on checking for any missing system drivers, creating and interpreting an Energy Report using the "powercfg /energyreport" command, evaluating third-party system software and checking Windows logs for power requests and wakeup triggers.

Check missing, incomplete or malfunctioning device drivers

The first and most easy step towards troubleshooting Standby issues, or indeed any other stability issues, is to check if Windows Device Manager is reporting (flagging) any missing, incomplete or incompatible device drivers. Please read this FAQ article for further details:

• How can I check if all my device drivers are properly installed?

Creating and interpreting an Energy Report

To create an Energy Report using the Command Prompt with Administrator rights:

• Press the Windows key, type "cmd" in the search box, and right-click on "Command Prompt."
• Select "Run as administrator."
• In the Command Prompt, type "powercfg /energy" and press Enter.
• Wait for the process to complete (approximately 60 seconds), and the report will be saved as "energy-report.html" in the "C:Windowssystem32" folder.

To interpret the warnings and errors in the Energy Report:

• Open the "energy-report.html" file in a web browser.
• Review the "Errors" and "Warnings" sections for any issues related to power management, drivers, or devices.
   

Overview screenshot of example energy-report.html

In the report file, warnings are colored in yellow and errors in red. Although there may be some exceptions, it is generally safe to say that warnings can be ignored. So we would only need to focus on the Errors, colored in red.

Not all errors are relevant.

It's not a bug, it's a feature

For example, "the computer is not configured to automatically sleep after a period of inactivity" is not an error, it's a user choice.

Most actually relevant errors are related to device drivers that are either missing or otherwise unable to enter suspend states. Such errors would always specify the Hardware ID of the particular device that is throwing the error.

Example screenshot: legitimate error in energy-report.html

The Hardware ID is labelled in the report as "Device ID" or "Host Controller ID". In order to identify the actual name or location of the device, please check the steps explained in this FAQ article:

• How can I check if all my device drivers are properly installed? (already linked to in the previous paragraph)

Once such a device has been identified, further steps must be taken remedy the error. The most basic steps would be:

• Check system or device vendor for driver updates
• Check system or device vendor for firmware updates
• Evaluate if the device may have any compatibility issues or conflict with other installed devices or with some 3rd party system software.

Check Event Viewer for Errors related to Standby or Power Transition

Windows Event Viewer can be a valuable tool for diagnosing and troubleshooting various system issues. While it may not always be able to pinpoint the root cause of an issue (for example: some system crashes don't leave any trace in the log), it is worth checking to see if it can give you any hints.

Press the Windows key, type "Event Viewer" in the search box, and press Enter to open the application. Alternatively, right-click the Windows Start Menu and select Event Viewer from the Context Menu.

When using Event Viewer to check for Standby issues, it is important to know during what time frame the issue occurred. Try to take note what was the last date and exact time at which you interacted with the device, and what was the exact later date and time at which you noticed an issue. An error that causes Standby issues may have occurred at any point between those two moments in time.

Event Viewer has several log categories, but the most important ones for troubleshooting are "Application" and "System" logs:

• Application: Contains events related to software applications, such as crashes or errors in third-party programs.
• System: Contains events related to the operating system, drivers, and hardware components. Most of the crucial logs are in this category.

Example screenshot of Event Viewer with a Wi-Fi-related error in the System log.

Be cautious not to overvalue the importance of some errors or warnings in the logs. Some messages may be harmless or unrelated to your issue, leading you in the wrong direction if you focus too much on them.

Please check this FAQ article for further information:

• How to check Windows Event Viewer for error messages

Evaluating third-party system software

Third-party system software, such as security, networking, monitoring, and tuning applications, can sometimes cause Standby issues. To evaluate these programs:

• Make a list of all third-party system software currently installed on your laptop.
• Research each program to determine if it is known to cause Standby issues or conflicts with other software.
• Temporarily disable or uninstall one program at a time and test Standby functionality to identify problematic software.
• Consider using alternative software with a better track record for compatibility and reliability, or contact the software vendor for assistance with resolving the issue.

Before going as far as uninstalling software, you can also first attempt to remove software from Automatic Startup. Please refer to this FAQ article for further details:

• How can I prevent certain software from starting automatically with Windows?

Check for Last Wake Events

If your PC is waking from sleep unexpectedly and you want to know which device triggered the wake-up event, open a Command Prompt with Admin rights and type in the following command:

• powercfg /lastwake

To see the list of devices that wake up the system, type in:

• powercfg /devicequery wake_armed

Example console output

In the example screenshot, the last wake-up call has occurred from a USB mouse that was connected to a Thunderbolt docking station.

Check for Power Requests

The drivers and software installed on your PC might interfere with sleep mode by sending power requests that keep the system awake. To see the log of all power requests, type in the following command:

• powercfg /requests

This will present a list of active power requests. All categories should theoretically be empty.

If the list is not empty, make a note of which software is prompting the power request. Close (exit) the software and run the powercfg command again. If the software still shows up, it probably has a permanent background service installed. Look up the settings of the software that causes the request and check for any options that may be related to the software's background activity. If you can't find any such settings, consider to remove the software from automatic startup or uninstall it completely.

Consider a clean reinstall of Windows

If your system meets any of the following conditions it may be a good reason to consider a clean Windows re-install.

• If you are not sure whether the initial install media was sufficiently up-to-date and official (i.e. if you have installed a modded or severely outdated release).
• If your Windows installation has already gone through multiple major releases and if you ever had any other serious issues with drivers or Windows Updates not being able to install.
• If your system has suffered from any hardware-related memory (RAM) or storage (SSD) issues in the past that would have been able to corrupt or alter system files in your current installation.
• If you ever had any system software installed for which you are not sure whether it was able to fully uninstall itself.
• If you ever used and 3rd party software to automatically update drivers where you are not sure if it actually installed the correct drivers.
• If you have ever used or installed any software that is designed to tamper with operating system's core functionality, such as Windows "Debloating" scripts or other 3rd party Windows tuning programs.
• If you ever had the suspicion that you have suffered from a computer virus or other malicious software attack.

For further details on how to do a clean reinstall of Windows, please check this FAQ article:

• How to do a clean Windows reinstallation

Conclusion

By following the instructions listed above, you should be able to solve most Standby issues on Windows laptops. Make sure to follow all the steps listed above. Reboot after you have completed all steps.

Remember that each system is unique, so it may take some trial and error to identify and resolve the root cause of the problem.

Workarounds

Considering that Standby (especially Modern Standby) is quite a delicate matter, another alternative might be to just remove Standby from your usage patterns altogether.

Follow this article:

• How to remove Standby from the user experience (optionally: replace with Hibernate)

If you are not able to identify and solve the root cause of your Standby issues and if disabling Standby is not a viable strategy for you, please consider to contact our support team. In your support request, please make sure to clarify whether or not you already performed all troubleshooting steps in this FAQ article. If any of the troubleshooting steps have brought certain issues to light (errors, driver issues, unclear wakeup sources etc.), please make sure to attach screenshots or report files to your support request.