Wake timers don't wake computer from sleep mode

I'm got a custom built PC running 64 bit Windows 7 Ultimate. So far everything works great except for one thing: it will not wake up from sleep mode for a wake timer or scheduled task.

Sleep mode itself works great. If it's sleeping, it wakes successfully when I press the power button, mash the keyboard, wiggle the mouse, or send a WOL packet. The only problem is wake timers. I even tried the program WakeupOnStandBy but it looks like that uses wake timers, so it doesn't do anything for me either.

And yes, wake timers are enabled:

Any ideas on how to fix the problem, or troubleshoot it? I'd imagine that there would be a log somewhere telling me exactly why the wake timers are having trouble, but if there is I haven't found it.

Solution 1:

I've struggled with this problem before, and have only been able to do it on one of my PCs.

Some things to try:

• Does your PC have a wake timer feature in the BIOS? If not, it may not be capable of waking up to a schedule.
• Try changing the Bios sleep modes, i.e. S1, S2 etc.
• Also, the one PC I can wake up to a schedule has ACPI 2.0 enabled in the BIOS. (Not sure if that is relevant or not.)

Sorry I can't give you a definitive solution.

Solution 2:

I too would advise checking the BIOS like Roh suggested. More specifically, check the power-management options and report the settings, particularly the one that selects whether to use S1 or S3 for standby.

You can also use Microsoft’s power utility to get a dump of Windows’ power-management settings.