Windows 10 changes power management settings

fingerprintpower-managementwindows 10

I have a Dell Latitude E5450 running windows 10. I have some problems with my fingerprint reader. Now and then, after a reboot or suspend, the fingerprint reader is not working. Each time when that happens, I go to "Device Manager", check my fingerprint reader and see that in "power management" settings the setting

"Allow the computer to turn of this device to save power"

is checked. I then uncheck this option (since that seems to be causing my problems) and it works fine for a while (couple of days).
Now and then, I check this setting and it remains unchecked.

However, after a while, for seem reason it becomes checked again and I can't sign in using my fingerprint reader.

Does anyone have any idea what my cause this? Or how to work around this issue?

Edit
Not sure if it's relevant, but I'm dual booting this pc with Ubuntu 15.10.
I know that sometimes Ubuntu sets certain hardware flags differently then windows.
I have not noticed that this issue would occur only after booting in Linux, but I cannot state for sure that it doesn't either.
(I have not managed to deliberately produce the bug yet)

Best Answer

A workaround you could try is to locate the right registry key holding the power settings (something like HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{UUID}\DeviceNumber. Once you identify the setting that the checkbox changes and the correct value, you should create a script which sets that value at each reboot.

If your fingerprint reader is physically on USB bus, you could also try to disable USB suspend by setting HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USB\DisableSelectiveSuspend to 1.

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