What process is sending input?
I wrote a program that outputs the amount of time my Windows 10 laptop's input is idle (e.g. GetLastInputInfo()). It does so every 1 second. If I do not touch the keyboard or mouse, the idle time will climb. Every 24 seconds, the idle time will reset back to zero. I suspect that some process is sending input. How do I figure out which process is sending input?
This prevents my laptop from going to sleep and hibernate.
- Autoruns does not show any new processes under the Logon tab.
- All categories of
powercfg /requestsshow none - The network cards are allowed to turn off
-
powercfg /energydoes not show anything useful -
powercfg /lastwakeis from days ago - WinSleep shows that the user idle time is being reset
- Two different keyloggers did not show any keystrokes when the idle input time is reset
- I wrote a key and mouse logger. It shows key and mouse events when I type or move the mouse but does not show any events when the idle input time is reset
I have a wireless mouse and wireless keyboard from Logitech. Logitech has a receiver that plugs into a USB port. If I remove the receiver, then the idle time is not reset. If I insert the receiver and turn off the mouse and keyboard, then the idle time is reset. I thought the Logitech receiver is going bad. I bought a new receiver. It did not solve the problem.
I then disabled half of the running Windows Services. This fixed the problem. I then reenabled half of those services. The problem did not come back. I kept reenabling or disabling half of the remaining services and eventually figured out that the service called Alienware Command Center Service is causing the problem.
In Windows Task Scheduler, I created a task to run every day at 5:30 am and when the laptop goes idle. The task executes the following commands:
- sc config AWCCService start=disabled
- sc stop AWCCService
These commands disable Alienware Command Center Service from starting and stop it if it is currently running.
Recently, I upgraded some Alienware software. This reenabled the service. The above task disabled the service. I have not had a problem since.