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My wife's computer with Windows 10 won't honor the screen timeout settings in Settings/Power and Sleep. Specifically, what happens is that the screen blanks for less than a second and then the screen comes back on. (And yes, the system won't sleep, either.)

If I explicitly tell the computer to sleep, it goes to sleep as expected.

I've checked the usual settings issues, and I've come to the tentative conclusion that one of the apps she's running is vetoing the sleep request.

Any ideas on how to figure out which app is causing this behavior?

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  • I understand you want the machine to go to sleep automatically. If you are able to put the machine to sleep manually that means there isn't an application that is preventing the machine from automatically going to sleep. This means the machine is never attempting to go into that sleep state. I have some additional thoughts, but don't have access to my notes, I will be asking for more information shortly.
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 22:58
  • Related but not a dupe - superuser.com/questions/1576236/… Higher rep users may be able to check if the deleted answers would be appropriate here [idk Win well enough to decide]. Empirically, things like radio stations & youtube will keep awake.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 20, 2021 at 6:27
  • As it turns out, it appears that the problem was caused by some sort of Microsoft Account issue. I contacted Microsoft support on a separate issue, which resulted in the power behavior going away.
    – Eric Brown
    Commented Mar 28, 2022 at 23:50

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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To view which applications are preventing just use the command (Using CMD with Admin rights):

powercfg /requests

And you will know the process.

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  • Unless there is a process call "None" in my computer, this is not it.
    – Martin Argerami
    Commented Apr 10 at 7:47
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Go to Settings > System > Power & sleep and look up on the settings.

Windows 10 default settings: enter image description here

Change your settings like this.

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  • 1
    As I said in the original message, I've checked those settings. The machine isn't honoring those settings.
    – Eric Brown
    Commented May 19, 2021 at 20:00

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