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Vista PC falls asleep before it can be backed up RRS feed

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    I've got a Vista Ultimate PC that I keep in S3 while I am not using it. I just got an HP WHS box and am trying to get the WHS automatic backup to work. I did one backup manually already, but I have had no luck getting the automatic part working. I've got the WHS configured to do the backups between 12AM and 12PM. Since the Vista PC is normally asleep (as am I ;-) in the early hours of the morning (when I would like the backup to be done), I figured I would need to get the Vista box to wake up at some point so WHS could do its backup. So I scheduled a task at 6AM to wake the PC. I thought that doing that would allow the WHS to see that it was awake and start the backup (although Ihave no idea how/when the WHS actually tries to initiate the backup, it'd be nice to know a bit more about how that works).

    The problem is, the Vista PC wakes up but then goes right back to sleep in 1-2 minutes (despire my power properties having been setup to have it not go to sleep for an hour) and the backup never happens. No matter what I do I can't seem to get the Vista PC to stay awake.

    Any ideas?
    Friday, November 23, 2007 1:56 PM

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    I should report that I finally solved my problem with the backups not running onmy Vista machine. It turns out that my Vista PC is connected to an APC UPS and that that is somehow fooling WHS backup into believing that I am running on battery (even though the power icon in the tray clearly says I am on AC power). WHS backup refuses to run if it thinks you are on battery (wish it had written an event to the event log to that efffect). I have temporarily bypassed the issue by unplugging the USB cable from the UPS to my PC and the WHS team is off looking into how to possibly fix it.
    Wednesday, January 2, 2008 8:02 PM

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    Hey,

     

    never played around with this but its something im also interested in looking into.

     

    Do you have the network card setup for WOL (wake on lan)  either in the bios of the pc or in the nic's properties.

     

    This in theory should wake the pc up when the home server goes looking for it to do its backup.

     

    As said i cannot confirm if it does work this way,  but i may have a play around at the weekend and see how it goes.

     

     

    Quick edit,  thought just hit me,   check the nic's propertys within widows and ensure that allow windows to put this device to sleep is not ticked.

     

    You dont want the nic going into power save mode.

    Friday, November 23, 2007 3:04 PM
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    Other than putting the Vista PC in standby, you don't need to do anything else. WHS will automatically take the Vista PC out of standby, do its backup, and put the Vista back in standby. I'd remove your scheduled task and see if that helps.

     

    Friday, November 23, 2007 3:05 PM
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    WOL works fine on this PC, I can wake it up from other PC's, but I have not seen the WHS attempt to do it. How often should it try?


    Friday, November 23, 2007 3:08 PM
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    Ok, but I'm also curious what the problem with Vista is. Why does it put itself back to sleep in 1-2 min when my power settings say to keep it awake for anhour after it wakes up. Seems like a bug.
    Friday, November 23, 2007 3:11 PM
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    couldnt tell you matey,  i power down all the pc's in the house apart from the home server when their not in use, 

     

    will look into mucking about with it over the weekend though,  the lass is off out looking at wedding dresses so will give me summat to do.

    Friday, November 23, 2007 3:13 PM
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    Not sure why people continue to bring up WOL on these theads.  It's been confirmed many times that WHS does not use WOL to wake up the client.  The connector software on the machine wakes it up.

     

    I am also on Vista Ultimate and it wakes it up from sleep and puts it back to sleep perfectly.

    Friday, November 23, 2007 3:42 PM
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     hedgexxx wrote:

    Not sure why people continue to bring up WOL on these theads.  It's been confirmed many times that WHS does not use WOL to wake up the client.  The connector software on the machine wakes it up.

     

    I am also on Vista Ultimate and it wakes it up from sleep and puts it back to sleep perfectly.



    How often does it do this? I guess I just don't know what to expect. I was under the impression it did it every day. Could you post some sample SYSTEM and/or APPLICATION event log entries showing this working? I have never been able to get Vista Ultimate to wake up as the result of a scheduled task having the "wake the computer to perform this task" property and stay awake for more than 1 minute or two. Before I got WHS I tried to use Acronis True Image to backup this PC every day and while the PC would come awake at 6AM and start to prepare to do the backup, 1-2 minutes later it would fall right back to sleep. Then later in the day when I awoke the PC myself, the suspended backup task would pick up and start running again (chewing up the CPU and disks, making it impossible to get any work done until it was finished, which is why I was trying to run it at 6AM in the first place). I had hoped that WHS would cure this for me but so far the only backups I have been able to get it to do are the ones I manually initiated. Thanks for any insights anyone might have into this.
    Friday, November 23, 2007 9:35 PM
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    It's been working great for 2 weeks now.  I've never tried the automated task to wake it up.

     

    Wow you'r sleep functionality is really messed up.  Does it go to sleep while you're using it? What do your power settings look like?  Have you checked for any odd BIOS settings?  Is it a home-built machine or an OEM build?

    Saturday, November 24, 2007 1:46 AM
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    No it only falls back to sleep if it was awoken by a scheduled task and there has been no keyboard or mouse input (like, when I am still in bed, asleep, exactly when I want it NOT to fall back to sleep). I use the so-called "balanced" power plan with default settings. It is a home-built machine (Intel D975XBX2, 4GB, Core2 Extreme, 8800GTX Ultra, etc.).
    Saturday, November 24, 2007 1:50 AM
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     Bob Cronin wrote:
    No it only falls back to sleep if it was awoken by a scheduled task and there has been no keyboard or mouse input (like, when I am still in bed, asleep, exactly when I want it NOT to fall back to sleep). I use the so-called "balanced" power plan with default settings. It is a home-built machine (Intel D975XBX2, 4GB, Core2 Extreme, 8800GTX Ultra, etc.).


    Ok, here's evidence of what I am talking about. It seems that the WHS software is trying to wake the PC up to do the backup after all. Here's an excerpt from my SYSTEM event log from about 1AM this morning (when I was defnitely not anywhere near the PC and when I do not have any scheduled tasks, so it had to be WHS that woke the PC).

    The 1:07:42 event is "The system has resumed from sleep" and the 1:09:37 is "The system is entering sleep".

    Information     11/24/2007 1:09:37 AM   Kernel-Power    42      None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:09:37 AM   ResourcePublication     102     None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:42 AM   Power-Troubleshooter    1       None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:41 AM   ResourcePublication     104     None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:40 AM   Dhcp-Client     1103    None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:36 AM   Tcpip   4201    None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:36 AM   Tcpip   4201    None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:36 AM   Tcpip   4201    None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:36 AM   Tcpip   4201    None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:36 AM   Tcpip   4201    None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:36 AM   Tcpip   4201    None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:36 AM   Tcpip   4201    None
    Information     11/24/2007 1:07:36 AM   Tcpip   4201    None

    Notice it wakes up at 1:07 and promptly falls back to sleep at 1:09, exactly 2 minutes later (definitely not enough time to do a backup).

    Why is Vista doing this? For what it is worth, I have 3 other PC's connected to the WHS now. They are all running XP Pro. I see in the Computers and Backups screen in the WHS console that those PC's have successfully been backed up automatically at least once since I installed WHS, so it is working for XP Pro clients. Just not Vista.

    Is there anyone out there with a Vista Ultimate PC connected to a WHS that regularly leaves the PC in sleep mode who has experienced a successful automatic backup (where the PC awakes and stays up long enough for a successful backup to be made)? If so can we please compare notes to see what might be different about my setup that could possibly be causing this?

    Bob

    Saturday, November 24, 2007 4:27 PM
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    Bob,

    FYI, I have 2x Vista Ultimates here, both of which come out of hibernation, back themselves up, and then go back into hibernation.

    It sounds like you have a problem with the ACPI configuration on your Vista computer somewhere because you appear to say that it goes back to sleep after a couple of minutes at times which have nothing to do with WHS and backups. There aren't conflicting settings between the Bios settings and the Windows settings? The Windows settings, in theory, should overide the Bios settings, but maybe there is some conflict between them. What is your motherboard model and does it have the latest Bios?

    If you disable all power saving settings, will the computer backup successfully then, or is it still the same?

     

    Colin

     

    Saturday, November 24, 2007 8:02 PM
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     ColinWH wrote:

    Bob,

    FYI, I have 2x Vista Ultimates here, both of which come out of hibernation, back themselves up, and then go back into hibernation.

    It sounds like you have a problem with the ACPI configuration on your Vista computer somewhere because you appear to say that it goes back to sleep after a couple of minutes at times which have nothing to do with WHS and backups. There aren't conflicting settings between the Bios settings and the Windows settings? The Windows settings, in theory, should overide the Bios settings, but maybe there is some conflict between them. What is your motherboard model and does it have the latest Bios?

    If you disable all power saving settings, will the computer backup successfully then, or is it still the same?

     

    Colin

     


    When you say "hibernation" do you mean hibernation, or hybrid sleep? My PC is configured for hybrid sleep (I use the so-called "balanced" power plan with the factory defaults, which sets hybrid sleep ON, do you have the same?).

    Also, regarding this:

    > because you appear to say that it goes back to sleep after a couple of minutes at times which have nothing to do with WHS and backups.

    That's not strictly true. I believe the 1AM wakeup was initiated by WHS connector for the purpose of running a backup, but the PC went back to sleep in 2 minutes and therefore the backup did not run.

    I will play with the BIOS options to see if it makes any difference, but in general all the power management works fine on this PC, it is just Vista that falls back to sleep too soon for some reason. Before Ihad Vist on this PC I had XP Pro and never had any such issue (and no, I did not "upgrade" over XP to Vista, I did a clean install using the full version of Vista Ultimate).
    Saturday, November 24, 2007 8:08 PM
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    Oh and my motherboard is the Intel D975XBX2 and yes, it has the latest BIOS. I religiously update my BIOS every time there's an update.
    Saturday, November 24, 2007 8:09 PM
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    I found this document

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-Vista-Energy-Conservation-42187.shtml

    wherein it touts as a "reliability" feature of Vista:

    - Improved idle detection that helps ensure that a PC awakened from the network or for scheduled activity returns to Sleep after 2 minutes of idleness

    It seems to me that this may be the feature that is responsible for my backup woes. Somehow it must be
    concluding that my system is idle and so puts it back to sleep in 2 minutes, whereas it is actually not idle
    at all.

    I dug around a bit more and found this document

    http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b2167-8017-4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/PMPolicy_Vista.doc

    wherein it discusses a power management setting called "Idle Threshold Setting" (aka "Required Idleness To Sleep"). It defaults to 80% for both AC and DC on the balanced plan. (as evidenced by the response to "powercfg /qh scheme_current sub_sleep" with the power plan set to balanced).

    It is described as

    Amount of idleness, as measured by processor use, that is required for the system to accrue idle time for the Sleep idle timeout.

    From which I conclude that if the system is at least 80% idle (e.g. processor usage less than 20%) that the time spent in that state will be counted up and as soon as it exceeds the threshold (2 minutes for a PC awakened by WOL or a scheduled task, I gather) then it goes back to sleep.

    So it seems to me that perhaps the root of my issue is that I have avery fast dual core machine where the processor utilization is always less than 20% and so invariably after 2 minutes, it sleeps.

    I am going to try playing with this parameter to see if I can get it set to a processor utilization percentage low enough that my system is not considered to be idle when it is in fact doing stuff. To start out, I will set the Idle Threshold Setting to 95% and see how it goes. The documentation claims the maximum possible setting is 100%, which I would guess would, if set to that, prevent it from sleeping ever, but hopefully I won't need that. I'd like it to sleep, just not while it is doing something like a backup!

    Anyway, for what its worth, here's the commands to set that new value (these settings are sadly, not exposed in the Power Settings GUI)

    powercfg -setacvalueindex scheme_current sub_sleep 81cd32e0-7833-44f3-8737-7081f38d1f70 95

    and to make it active

    powercfg -setactive scheme_current

    We shall see if any of this helps.



    Sunday, November 25, 2007 2:01 AM
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    Bob,

    Sorry, I missed the 'hybrid' option in your initial post. On my systems one of the first things I did, was to dismiss that function as I wanted the full hibernation. Easy enough to do:

    Click Start, type command in the Start Search box, right-click Command Prompt in the Programs list, and then click Run as administrator. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type your password or click Continue. At the command prompt, type  powercfg /hibernate on.

    Whether that now bypasses this 2 minutes idle problem, I'm not sure, but certainly, these machines back up every night.

    I have always set up the systems to S4, if available, S3 if not. Currently, they are all S4.

    As a matter of interest, this site, might give you some pointers as well.

     

    Good luck,

     

    Colin

     

    Sunday, November 25, 2007 9:02 AM
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    Nothing helped.

    This PC simply cannot be made to stay awake for more than 2 minutes after having been awoken from S3 by either WOL or a scheduled task. For grins I also tried it from S4, with the same result.

    Blah.
    Sunday, November 25, 2007 9:17 PM
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    Hi Bob,

    Not that this is much use, but I think this is a known problem with Vista, although I've yet to find anything about it in the MS support pages.

    I have a couple of PCs running Vista Ultimate, and they both have this problem.  If I schedule a job to take the machine out of S3, they'll go back to sleep within 1 or 2 minutes (eg, before the job ends).  I'm not currently using WHS, but I get the same problem with my "standard" backups (basically, a batch file which copies files to another machine in the early hours).

    I've also got a machine running Vista Business, which I haven't yet tested.  All three of these machines are Dells (one XPS Desktop, one XPS laptop, and an Inspiron laptop).

    I've spend quite a lot of time trying to figure this out, but have been unable to so far.  There are a few postings on usenet, about it including this one (which is how I heard that MS are aware of the problem - The first post is mine)

    Interestingly, I've recently also discovered that if I take a machine out of S3 via WOL, then it also goes back to sleep within 1 or 2 minutes.  I've even tried manually setting the power mode to "High performance" (using powercfg on the command line) as the first step in my scheduled event, but although I see the machine has gone into high performance mode (and hence should not automatically go back into S3), it does!

    I can reproduce this every time on the two Dell XPSs, although as I've said I haven't tested it on the Inspiron yet.  I'd be very, very interested if you find a solution!

    Interestingly, my desktop machine is running Media Center, and that always successfully records TV programs, so it isn't sleeping too early when MCE wakes it up.

    Regards,
    Adam.


    Monday, November 26, 2007 11:59 AM
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    As a P.S, I'm pretty sure it's got nothing to do with the CPU usage.

    After reading your post about the Vista Power Policy, I thought I'd try coming at it from a different angle, and rather than changing the idle threshold, I'd just keep the CPU busy.

    I wrote a little command line program which kept the CPU at around 50% for x seconds, WOL my PC, connected via TS, ran the program on the PC (keeping it busy for 5 minutes), disconnected, and watched (via ping.. I'm not at home at the moment).  Sure enough, two minutes after I disconnected the TS session the PC went back into S3, desipte the fact the CPU was running a process at 50%

    ..and I really thought that would work! <sigh>

    A.


    Monday, November 26, 2007 1:10 PM
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    I'm having the same problem guys.  I'm running vista and in my case I run tasks like NIS scans and spybot and telling the scheduled task to wake the PC in order to run.  The PC does wake but falls back asleep after 2 mins.  I think I actually have a solution but I havent verified it yet.  Its not the most elegant solution but it may bridge us until Microsoft fixes the problem.   Its a program called Auto Power-on and shut down - http://www.lifsoft.com/

     

    Prior to learning about Vista's ability to auto wake the PC to run a task, I bought this app to do the job.  I think when I tested it before it did wake vista to run the task and I think Vista actually stayed awake.  I'll have to test it again to verify this.  Anyhow if you want to play around with its free for 30 days and the $24.95.  I found it clean, vista compatibile, and no installation issues.  Like I say this shouldnt be needed but may be a bridge until there's a fix.

    Monday, November 26, 2007 1:16 PM
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     NCguy wrote:

    I'm having the same problem guys.



    Thanks for the info.  I may give that a try, although I'd rather get Vista working properly if I can!

    Cheers,
    Adam.

    Monday, November 26, 2007 1:46 PM
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    So would I but it sounds like unless/until Microsoft provides a fix that isnt going to happen?

     

    Monday, November 26, 2007 4:29 PM
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    Confession time. That "bc" in that thread you referenced was me back when I was struggling to get Acronis True Image to work on Vista. I ditched it in favor of WHS because WHS promised hassle-free automated backup. Heh. Guess not. <heavy sigh>

    MS never did get back to me telling me there was a fix for the support incident I opened (which they promised to do), so I don't know if there's much hope that SP1 will fix this. It seems to be a feature of Vista they're proud of. Saves power, you know. Grrr.

    Bob
    Monday, November 26, 2007 11:38 PM
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     Bob Cronin wrote:
    Confession time. That "bc" in that thread you referenced was me back when I was struggling to get Acronis True Image to work on Vista. I ditched it in favor of WHS because WHS promised hassle-free automated backup. Heh. Guess not. <heavy sigh>


    Hehe.  Small world.  Oh well.

    I've been running some more tests, and looking back at my logs, and I think it appears that my PC does actually stay awake if there is network activity (which is certainly didn't used to, so maybe that's been fixed by an update).  It's difficult to know because my PC switches on at 4am or something to do it's backup, but as I'm using the PC more and more for Media Center, and less and less as a workstation (tend to use the laptop more), it's difficult to know if the backup event is completing during the scheduled time, or at another time when the PC wakes to record something.

    When I get the time I'll go back though the event log and take a look, but at the moment is't not actually causing me too many problems as I don't really care when the event finishes, as long as it does.  That situation may change once my WHS machine arrives of course...

    Adam.

    Monday, November 26, 2007 11:51 PM
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    I should report that I finally solved my problem with the backups not running onmy Vista machine. It turns out that my Vista PC is connected to an APC UPS and that that is somehow fooling WHS backup into believing that I am running on battery (even though the power icon in the tray clearly says I am on AC power). WHS backup refuses to run if it thinks you are on battery (wish it had written an event to the event log to that efffect). I have temporarily bypassed the issue by unplugging the USB cable from the UPS to my PC and the WHS team is off looking into how to possibly fix it.
    Wednesday, January 2, 2008 8:02 PM