I had a problem recently with Windows 7 refusing to go to sleep. I would click “Sleep” and the screen would go off but all the fans were still going and on moving the mouse around I would be presented with the login screen – not exactly “Sleep” in my books. This baffled me, and no matter how many times I told the machine to go to sleep it would behave the same way.
In the end I’d just give up and shut the machine down, but last night I was feeling in the mood to do a bit of investigation so I looked around and found a few posts which answered the issue.
First up was “Windows 7 – Why your computer won’t go to sleep” where I discovered a new command for investigating exactly this issue – I could run “powercfg /requests” to see what was causing the computer to fail to go to sleep.
You need to run this as an administrator, so go to start, type “cmd” and right-click the Cmd icon and select “Run as Administrator” as shown in the screen capture to the right.
This launches your command line interface where you should type “powercfg /requests”. Note if you don’t run this as administrator you will get an error message on running the command.
Below you can see the offending result:
AWAYMODE: [PROCESS] \Device\HarddiskVolume2\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmpnetwk.exe Media Sharing has been enabled through Windows Media Player.
Instantly this revealed that there was something active with Windows Media Player.
A bit of research dug up the fact that Windows Media Player 12 comes with an option for Media Sharing – not something I’ve ever used or ever see myself using. This post on superuser gave me an idea of what was going on.
I investigated my Homegroup settings and found that Homegroups weren’t enabled, but I did remember having switched Homegroups on when I first installed Windows 7 to test them out as a possible alternative to old-style networking. So it looked as though Windows 7 had enabled this service and it was running by default whether I wanted it or not.
Simple solution: disable the service entirely and prevent it from running.
To do this, go to start and type “services.msc” and hit enter. This launches your services configuration editor. Scroll down to “Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service” and right-click and open “Properties”. In here you can stop the service and change the “Startup Type” to “Disabled”. Click apply and you’re all done.
If you want you can now run “powercfg /requests” again and you’ll no longer see wmpnetwk.exe causing any block on your computer going into sleep mode.
Happy sleeping!
6:42 pm
April 8th, 2010
Or you could just go to the power management settings and for multimedia settings select “allow the computer to sleep.”
1:30 pm
October 7th, 2010
thank you !!!!!!
1:36 pm
October 7th, 2010
No problem! Glad it was of some use :)
@Mack – very sorry I didn’t reply before, must have slipped my mind. Thanks for the tip as well. Didn’t realise this was the same action.
4:20 pm
October 30th, 2010
My PC with Win 7 too can’t enter sleep, it goes blank for a second and then wakes up! I have done everything possible including this advice to no avail.
You incapable, incredibly stupid, MORONS, who are working for Microsoft, not ever been able to make something that simply works, GO HOME you do not deserve to even touch a computer, your stupidity is world-wide destructive! You are causing pain and frustration to millions YOU EMPTY HEADS!
2:23 pm
January 2nd, 2011
it showed that rasman is the problem. how could i stop rasman then?
7:06 am
January 10th, 2011
He Geboy,
According to liutilities, rasman.exe is a dialler service for windows. However it also cautions that this process can be duplicated by malware.
I would advise first checking your Task Manager (invoked by Ctrl+shift+esc), to see whether there are one or more instances or rasman.exe under the Processes tab. You could try selecting these processes, if they exist, and clicking the “End Process” button at the bottom-right of Task Manager.
It might also be worthwhile running some comprehensive virus and malware scans just to be safe. I highly recommend Spybot Search & Destroy which has been extremely effective in fixing issues on computers owned by friends of mine. I do not know if it would be effective against this sort of issue, but there’s no harm in running it as it improves your security an awful lot. From the virus end of things, you should definitely have a anti-virus programme installed, something like MS Security Essentials, AVG (although I’m less impressed with them lately), Avira, NOD, etc.
I hope this is of some assistance.
Kind regards,
Alex
7:38 pm
May 25th, 2011
I’m having the same problem. When I go into the command prompt, however, it won’t let me run the command because it’s telling me I have to be an administrator. Yet when I go to user accounts and click on mine, it’s telling me I AM set up as an admin.
See the pic here: http://tinypic.com/r/vy46dv/7
Regardless, I did as you suggested for the Windows Media Player, but it didn’t seem to help so I don’t think that was the problem.
I hate not having the computer go to sleep at night, because I wake up and it’s hot to the touch — can’t be good for it.
Help?
7:40 pm
May 25th, 2011
Oh, and I checked for rasman.exe and I don’t have it running, either. No spy/malware.
6:45 am
May 26th, 2011
Hi Jamie,
Just to check, did you launch cmd.exe as an administrator – even though your account is an administrator account, you still need to right-click on cmd.exe and select “Run as administrator”. This will then provoke a prompt depending on your UAC settings and you should be able to run the command as required.
Perhaps if you can get the powercfg /requests command to run we can see what it is that’s enabled and preventing your computer from going to sleep.
Cheers,
Alex
6:12 am
May 27th, 2011
Well, ya learn something new every day, don’tcha? :) I always have just typed in CMD for the command prompt.
OK, so having done that, now I’m even more perplexed. This is what it tells me when I run your command:
http://tinypic.com/r/mj0hu0/7
That makes me think there’s no reason that it shouldn’t be working, unless I’m totally misreading it.
Help?
7:23 pm
May 30th, 2011
WOW! Worked like a charm, thanks so much!
11:02 pm
May 30th, 2011
Alex, did you see my previous post?
3:34 am
May 31st, 2011
@Jeff great to hear it helped
@Jamie: sorry I didn’t get back to you yet but have been very busy the last few days. Certainly it looks that you have no impediment to your computer going to sleep – at least the Windows Media Player network sharing impedance is not present. I’d suggest trying to put your computer to sleep, if it fails, then run the powercfg /requests command immediately and see if still comes up blank. You can also, whilst CMD is being run in elevated mode, try powercfg /energy – this scans your system for 60 seconds and returns a report. I’m not too familiar with the contents, but there could be some information therein that assists.
Also, are you currently using Home Groups – if you are I would be interested to know if temporarily disabling them enables you putting the computer to sleep.
Double check advanced settings for media sharing too, although this should be disabled by previous steps, not harm in double checking.
Finally, does your computer go to sleep when wired/wireless networks are unplugged/turned off?
I’m sure we’ll work it out!
4:39 am
June 22nd, 2011
Thanks for the great advise, it worked just beautiful. Problem solved.
4:41 am
June 22nd, 2011
Hi Jorge,
Great to hear this article was able to help you out!
Cheers,
Alex
7:59 pm
June 22nd, 2011
Alex:
Bad news, I tried your advise yesterday, it worked fine the first time, after that, I have the same issue, my computer just can’t go into the sleep mode. Checked the Media share system and its disabled, any idea of what can be happening?
8:39 pm
June 24th, 2011
Problem solved, it was the network connection. I switched from wireless to wired and that was the problem. Just unplugging the cable network ends all activity and the computer goes to sleep without any problem.
12:58 am
August 2nd, 2011
Just wanted to say, this article helped me out. Running the powercfg /energy report did the trick – I realized that my printer was preventing my computer from going to sleep. Thanks!
12:24 pm
August 8th, 2011
Hi David,
Delighted to hear this article was able to help you get it worked out :)
Thanks for dropping a comment.
Alex
4:51 am
January 8th, 2012
Mine says:
(Driver) filesystem\srvnet
but I can’t find it anywhere in my computer
3:01 pm
January 8th, 2012
Hi Tom,
I did some searching around and I think I’ve found a possible solution (http://forums.windowsforum.org/index.php?showtopic=46205)
If you go to your cmd console and type the following:
powercfg -requestsoverride driver \FileSystem\srvnet systemThat should do it apparently.. hope this helps.
4:38 pm
January 8th, 2012
Thanks Alex. Fantastic. It finally has return to going to sleep on it’s own. It was driving me crazy for weeks. I had tried uninstalling the last couple of driver updates etc but nothing I tried had worked
4:40 pm
January 8th, 2012
Hey Tom,
Brilliant! Glad to hear that sorted it out. I know how frustrating it is when the machine refuses to go to sleep so I’m delighted I was able to help out :)
Cheers!
Alex