My Lenovo ThinkPad running Windows 8.1 wouldn't go to sleep, here's how I fixed it
My household has an 8 year old T61P laptop kicking about that's running Windows 8.1 on a Samsung 840 EVO SSD (with RAPID mode enabled). It runs pretty well, even though it's stuck at SATA2 speeds. Tends to play the role of a temporary PC when a laptop has gone out for service.
Right after upgrading this T61P from Windows 8 a while back, I double-checked that all the power configuration settings were squared away using the usual:
- right-click Start, choose "Command Prompt (Admin)", then type:
POWERCFG /DEVICEQUERY wake_armed
to verify that the only thing in Device Manager that would allow the PC to wake up was the keyboard.
Soon after the upgrade, I noticed it just wouldn't go to sleep on its own, after those 10 minutes of inactivity that I had configured in Windows 8.1 "Edit power plan". Pressing Ctrl+F4 to manually suspend worked fine.
I had tried the usual ways of troubleshooting power issues, such as:
-
verify the Power Profile was set to suspend after 10 minutes of inactivity for both battery and on AC power
- replace the Power Management driver with the latest version available from Lenovo here, which of course doesn't list the ancient T61P as a compatible, but it works fine anyway.
Unlike my gZilla system, I didn't have to resort to the extreme measure of disabling all maintenance task wake-ups as described on Reddit at Windows 8 and 8.1 wake up from sleep, seemingly at random.
The fix for my T61P was easy, basically install the Lenovo Desktop Power Manager and ignore the lack of the ancient T61P in the supported product list, details below. Now it goes to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity, saving that completely unnecessary watt burn.
It will be interesting to see if this proprietary Lenovo Power Manager silliness is still necessary with Windows 10, I'll know by July 29th!
1) Download Lenovo Desktop Power Manager
2) Install
Double-click the downloaded .exe to launch, wait up to 10 minutes for the installer to show up (no idea why), then choose default install options
3) Reboot
4) Wait
Leave the system alone, at idle, then wait at least as long as the minutes you had set, to verify it actually sleeps.
5) Rejoice!
Take 8 seconds to drop a comment below (no login required), then go do something more fun!
See also
If you run into trouble with the above article suggestion, or these Lenovo Troubleshooting suggestions, the best place to post your support request is over at Lenovo ThinkPad Forums here.
