power-managementwindows 10
POWERCFG -requests shows that System32\MoUsoCoreWorker.exe is the reason the computer never sleeps.
This article notes that restarting the Windows update service can fix it temporarily. It does clear MoUsoCoreWorker.exe from the POWERCFG -requests report.
But hours later, MoUsoCoreWorker.exe is running again, and the computer still won't sleep.
Is there any better approach?
I think the hard drives don't support Windows 7's new Power Management settings.
I'm getting regular Blue Screens of Happiness whenever I try to "wake up" my E-Sata external hard drive. I installed the newest Intel Raid drivers (which I hope contain some updated drivers) and it's better now, but still not perfect.
The default Power Management options in Windows 7 Beta turns off the Hard Disk after 20mins. This could cause problems when the PC comes out of sleep mode or hibernation. To work around the problem set the Power Options for the Hrd Disk to never turn off. To do this
- Click Start – Control Panel – System and Security – Power Options
- Click “Change Plan Settings” on the “Balanced (recomended)”
- Click “Change Advanced power settings”
- Under the “Turn Off Hard Disk after” option change the timing to “0″ which should set it to Never. Click Apply and OK.
Bingo. I found it. An ISO mounting utility I ran had a file mounted and opened across the network. Apparently if a file is open for read across the network, Windows is prevented from sleeping.
On another note - I discovered a little quirk with the powercfg utility. It seems to make a difference what type of terminal you run it from. Running under cygwin and Console2 gave false and erratic reports from the program (including a could not load energy.dll error from running powercfg -ENERGY). At first I thought the issues with [DRIVER] ? were just a matter of the program not having sufficient information to determine the driver; but it was really a symptom of being executed under a standard cmd.exe terminal.
As Emory points out in the comment below, the cause of this odd behavior is that powercfg requires elevated permissions - requiring that it be run as Administrator. There is no warning built in to the program to alert the user, it will just return incorrect output (and possibly could not locate energy.dll in the case of powercfg -ENERGY). It must be run from a command prompt with elevated privileges.
Sooo... long story short... to determine what program is keeping your system from sleeping:
cmd.exe with administrative privileges (this is key, powercfg will run under anything, but will give incorrect results)powercfg -requests to get a listing of items currently preventing sleep.I was able to determine that files open across the network were preventing sleep in my case.
Best Answer
According to the information supplied by the poster, it's most likely that Windows was waking up the computer at night in order to install new updates, as are the default settings of Windows Update.
Once all updates have been installed, the computer goes back to sleeping happily and doesn't wake up any more. Until the next time.
Finer control over Windows Update is found in Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and in Power Options > Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings, under Sleep, Allow wake timers.