Power management

[enjay]

We've got PowerMAN installed, but find it inconsistent at best regarding whether the computers actually do what they're meant to, and the troubleshooting process is quite time-consuming. As a minimum, we'd like computers to sleep/hibernate overnight and restart weekly, but ideally idle computers would sleep/hibernate during the day too.

 

What systems are you using to control this?

[Rob_D]

We set sleep and hibernate on inactivity timeouts through group policy power plans, and use remote shutdown scripts scheduled on a server for overnight/weekend shutdowns (although these days, I see people using group policy to push out scheduled shutdown/reboot tasks to each machine).

[enjay]

We set sleep and hibernate on inactivity timeouts through group policy power plans

 

Do those actually work, though? As I understand it, that's basically what PowerMAN is doing plus some nice reporting, and they often don't hibernate, or they do and then immediately wake again.

[mavhc]

Does it give a reason for what's stopping the device being idle/waking up the device? USB mouse? Network activity?

[enjay]

Does it give a reason for what's stopping the device being idle/waking up the device? USB mouse? Network activity?

 

Unfortunately not, and that's where the time-consuming troubleshooting comes in, as we have to log in to the computer and tell it to sleep then see what happens, then wake it up, unplug the mouse, sleep it again, see what happens, wake it up, plug the mouse back in, take the network out, sleep it, watch what happens.

[mavhc]

psexec \\computername powercfg /lastwake
psexec \\computername powercfg /waketimers

[enjay]

Thanks. I get this:

 

Wake History Count - 1

Wake History [0]

Wake Source Count - 1

Wake Source [0]

Type: Device

Instance Path: PCI\VEN_10EC&DEV_8168&SUBSYS_18E9103C&REV_0C\4&11dd9c9b&0&00E2

Friendly Name: Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller

Description: Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller

Manufacturer: Realtek

 

Does that mean the NIC is waking it? If so, why might it be doing that??

[mavhc]

Yep, there's 2 options, wake on lan, which is unlikely, or it's just set to wake up the computer when it sees activity.

 

In device manager, nic, power management there's options.

[Rob_D]

Do those actually work, though? As I understand it, that's basically what PowerMAN is doing plus some nice reporting, and they often don't hibernate, or they do and then immediately wake again.

I tell a lie, we've never used hibernate, but we've definitely got sleep working. I have had the "insomniac" PC problem at home, which was down to a dodgy HID driver (for a razer gamepad in my case).

[enjay]

Yep, there's 2 options, wake on lan, which is unlikely, or it's just set to wake up the computer when it sees activity.

 

In device manager, nic, power management there's options.

 

Definitely not WOL so it's waking when it sees some activity. In which case, am I looking for devices sending broadcast packets? Although, that doesn't explain why sometimes in a room every computer sleeps except one.

[mavhc]

I can tick "only wake up for WOL packets" in my driver

[Koldov]

I can tick "only wake up for WOL packets" in my driver

 

Something similar here, I don't use WOL as it's such a small school everything is just as quick to do manually - so I always make sure all these settings are unticked.

 

[enjay]

Thanks @mavhc and @Koldov I will check those settings on a few computers.

[enjay]

I can tick "only wake up for WOL packets" in my driver

 

Apparently PowerMAN can make that setting change by Group Policy, so I've enabled that and will see what happens.

[mavhc]

https://amanulloh.com/2021/11/02/enable-wake-on-lan-via-gpo/

[enjay]

Timed shutdowns and WOL are possible options, but I'm more interested in power management during the day (partly because that will cover evenings/weekends too). Literally as I type this, at least 4 of our computer rooms are empty, so those 120 computers haven't been used since before lunch. Having those computers sleep/hibernate when idle rather than wait for an after-school shutdown script would save something like £8 just this afternoon (unless my maths has gone squiffy, which is entirely possible). Scale that across every computer room, every lesson they're not used, every break and lunch, every lesson where only 10 students are in the room not 30, and you get a huge amount of electricity usage/saving.

[mavhc]

All my desktop computers are set to standby after 15 mins