Overly Active Application/Utility

[charlesn56]

I am running Windows 7 64-bit. And have installed a program that does not let my computer go to the sleep mode. Is there a way that PL can control this activity.

Thanks in advance.

[hanemach_gt]

Make sure that no-sleep processes list is empty (Options -> Configure anti-sleep processes).

[Jeremy Collake]

I may be wrong, but I believe his question was not that Process Lasso is causing the computer not to sleep, but that some other application is preventing the computer from sleeping.

Whether or not the offending application's behavior can be adjusted with Process Lasso depends on how it is preventing the computer from sleeping. If it is doing so by changing the active power scheme, then you could potentially use a default power scheme and 'Forced mode'. Please report how this works (or not), if that is what the application is doing. You could also just change the settings of the power scheme it is switching to. However, I am guessing that isn't what it is doing, as it would be easily addressed.

If the application is preventing the PC from sleeping by making API calls to reset the idle state, then there isn't anything Process Lasso can do. To make it sleep would require hooking APIs in the offending process and a thorough examination of the application.

Of course, as you know, the best solution is to have the offending application change its own behavior. A small binary patch could probably do it, though of course that isn't something the average Joe would do. What application is it we are talking about?

[charlesn56]

I have two in mind.

1) Is PerfectDisk w/ StealthPatrol enabled. I know that when the application is optimizing the disk there is no way that the computer will or should go to sleep. But after this activity is done it should. There are a number of users of this software that are aware of how this affects the sleep process.

2) Is a sound utility named Astoundsound Expander. This software is a 3D Sound Processing software. I have contacted the company with little response. With the driver of this software loaded and running the computer will never sleep.

[Jeremy Collake]

In both cases they surely prevent the system from sleeping by resetting the Idle Timer (the API call method). This means I can't do much. It is a real shame that application developers are not more responsive to fixing what I consider to be a critical problem.

I could fix both, but the API hook method is so outside the purview of Process Lasso that I just don't know... Further, it would be difficult to know when they really need to prevent the PC from sleeping (e.g. during a defrag), or when they are just malfunctioning ;o.

All in all, bad news. I'd shout to the top of my lungs about these problems until the vendors get this fixed!