Windows display doesn't sleep or turn off [Solution]
The Issue
If you use Windows and your computer or monitors aren't turning off or going to sleep when they should be, it could be that a program is keeping them awake.
The Solution
To list programs that are keeping your display awake, enter the following command into an administrative command prompt:
powercfg -requests
Here's some example output. To show you how it looks when something is keeping the system awake, I started a video game trailer playing in the Steam game client.
PS C:\Users\chris> powercfg -requests DISPLAY: [PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Steam\bin\cef\cef.win7x64\steamwebhelper.exe Video Wake Lock SYSTEM: [DRIVER] Legacy Kernel Caller AWAYMODE: None. EXECUTION: [PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files (x86)\Steam\bin\cef\cef.win7x64\steamwebhelper.exe Playing audio PERFBOOST: None. ACTIVELOCKSCREEN: None. PS C:\Users\chris>
In the above example, the process steamwebhelper.exe
is keeping the display(s) awake.
"steamwebhelper.exe" isn't exactly "Steam" but it's got "steam" in it, so that's a pretty good clue
about which app I can close to make my displays go to sleep.
When you run the command yourself, you could have a different thing keeping the system awake. If you have YouTube playing a video, it'll be your web browser process name. If it's something else it may have a weird name that you don't recognize, but there will probably be some clue.
Example output where nothing is keeping the displays awake:
PS C:\Users\chris> powercfg -requests DISPLAY: None. SYSTEM: None. AWAYMODE: None. EXECUTION: None. PERFBOOST: None. ACTIVELOCKSCREEN: None. PS C:\Users\chris>
What if I can't get rid of the thing?
If powercfg -requests
lists some process or device, but you can't figure out what program to close, a reboot might fix it!