Windows – laptop won’t wakeup on mouse move, must open lid

lidmousepower-managementwindows 7

I have a dell e6410 running Windows 7.
I have a docking station with 2 displays plus a USB video display.
My power settings are to turn off the display after 30min but never to hibernate or sleep.

After being away from my desk a while the displays go dark and into standby. Moving my mouse shows a cursor on the second display, but nothing gets the attention of the laptop.

I have to open the lid to wake it up, then close it right away. This results in activating all the displays and I can unlock it and continue working.

Why must I open the lid? Is there a way around this?

–edit–
Note: the computer is not in any kind of SLEEP or low-power mode. I just want to unlock it but the LCD panels themselves are in standby. I wonder if all the USB devices are also in standby (the external USB video card is powered off when I come back to the laptop.

–edit2–
Found that the computer is actually indeed in HIBERNATE mode, even though I modified the 'balanced' plan to 'Put the computer to sleep' as 'Never' for both 'On battery' and 'Plugged in'. The nuance between SLEEP and HIBERNATE gets lost in the submenus/advanced settings it would seem.

Best Answer

You might have to enable the mouse to be able to wake your computer. Under control panel -> Device Manager -> Mice and other pointing devices -> (choose your mouse) -> right click and choose properties -> Power Management -> make sure "Allow this device to wake the computer" is checked