Windows Modern standby bullshit that don't sleep but pretends to

[MrMobodies]

I had an issue with one of my laptops with Windows 10 LTSC 1809 four years ago. It would not go to sleep with the power attached. Long story short I disabled from doing that it by adding some power options in registry I think I think but didn't add it to my disc image back again and can't remember the setting so now trying to do it again for this other one so trying to compared the previous laptop. I'd thought this sort of stuff would be a glitch but apparently not.

I'd be very angry at the time with it was "PRETENDING"to go into sleep and found out just now this is what it was exactly doing where it drained the battery twice this month and many years ago for the other one as I put it in the bag expecting it to go to sleep so what's the point of a sleep button if it is going to do that.

https://www.dell.com/community/en/conversations/xps/xps-15-9570-bios-130-sleep-mode-gone/647f7bd2f4ccf8a8dea1c8d4

XPS 15-9570, BIOS 1.3.0, sleep mode gone?
okwei August 8th, 2018 09:00

I just bought my XPS 15-9570 with BIOS 1.2.2 installed, and I updated it to BIOS 1.3.0. I realized that the "sleep mode" option is now gone. I need to set this to "Force S3" sleep to prevent the laptop from waking up randomly, or don't go to sleep properly. So can I do that in the new BIOS?

robert p's Operator December 11th, 2018 03:00

Dell has decided to support the "Modern Standby" *from our partner Microsoft. If you decide you wish to use S3 instead of Modern Standby, you can attempt to install an older BIOS, but Dell cannot assist in this.

Utter bullshit!
No! They REMOVED a feature or setting in the firmware. Supporting it should not warrant removal of settings especially brought and paid for with the product. Reminds me a little like the Sony and the Other OS thing in 2011. Looks like there are strings attached to the agent who has to support only Microsoft not the user. Again it's ALL about Microsoft again not what the customer wants and they don't seem to care about the battery or overheating.

*Sod the user for support.

Stijn2 August 28th, 2019 01:00 Accepted Solution

There is an easy fix for this problem! Works with the latest bios and all older bios and it forces S3 Sleep. Been using it for a while and it works.
It disables the Dell modern standby (wich causes the problem) and sets the regular sleep function as default. (the sleep we all know and love, no fan spin, no random wakes)

Press start -> type: regedit -> press enter. Then navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\CsEnabled

When you press the second to last folder (power) there is a file on the right side called CsEnable. Right click it, press modify and set the value to 0.

Tada! No more modern standby and regular sleep function has been restored! After that check the bios power settings and make sure al the “wake on ….” Functions are turned off.

It seems Microsoft have now "fixed" this issue "for themselves only and nobody else" by removing options to turn it off in build 2004.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-disable-modern-standby-in-windows-10-may/db950560-33da-4a90-8340-b1f181f5efe6

Lukas DziadkowiecReplied on June 13, 2020

I and many colleagues from our company have the very same problem after installing build 2004. We have S0 already disabled as it does not work correctly on our DELLs XPS 9570 laptops, they are cooking themselves alive. After installing build 2004 I immediately noticed that going to sleep means 50/50 BSOD+reboot or wake up. I have real concerns about the sanity of MS leadership as Windows 10 is one big public alpha-stage project.

So Microsoft are now DICTATING the states I want it but PRETENDS to go in sleep when I command it and expect it which I find a damn insult. It's almost reminds me when I was about 5 and the parents pretend and fob off the children like they wouldn't notice when they pretend to be sleeping in this game.

Like I mentioned before in this thread:

This goes to show that it is ALL about Microsoft and what they want for the mass majority. The mass majority who they think are stupid and confused don't know they doing or what they're doing or want (which is where I think they are effectively calling them stupid.

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/lenovo-laptop-wont-sleep-when-plugged-in.12468/

glasskuter aka Mama Glass  Feb 7, 2023

IMO, this issue can also be related to modern standby which is a different form of sleep than the old S3 sleep that we are accustomed to. In fact, modern standby is actually not sleep at all and I do not know why MS refers to it as such. If none of the above suggestions help, report back and we can make suggestions from a modern standby perspective

https://www.tenforums.com/general-support/157734-v-2004-update-removes-ability-turn-off-modern-standby.html

v.2004 update removes ability to turn off "Modern Standby"
Ander 04 Jun 2020

I've just updated Windows 10 to ver. 2004—and apparently one of the new "features" is that we can no longer choose between standard Sleep mode and "Modern Standby" (formerly known as "InstantGo"). In Sleep mode, everything in your system is turned off except a small trickle of power to RAM, to keep your current session intact.

In Modern Standby, only the display is definitely turned off. USB power stays on (e.g. for charging other devices). On some systems, network connections (including WiFi) are also left on, and updates and file transfers (e.g. email) occur even when the system isn't being used or monitored. Naturally, this drains batter power faster—and in some cases, can create security problems. I realized this had happened because, after the update, my laptop's cooling pad kept running when I closed its lid. I must now unplug it each time, and be sure I've gone offline beforehand. I haven't seen how it's affected the length of time I can leave my computer in this state—but I assume it won't be as long as I used to be able to.

In the past, we could use this registry hack to turn off Modern Standby. As of v.2004, it doesn't work. The corresponding registry key no longer exists, and if you create it, it has no effect. Does anyone else feel this is overbearing on the part of Microsoft? And has anyone found a new fix yet?

Ph0t0n222 4 yr. ago Thanks mkdr!!!!
...
So basically, when you use S3 mode, you will lose up to 15% of your battery life unless you reboot after every time it sleeps!!! Ouch!

I also want to call attention to Dell's practice of censorship. Go here: https://www.dell.com/community/XPS/XPS-15-9570-BIOS-1-3-0-sleep-mode-gone/td-p/6131926 and look at posts by mkdr - They are censoring his (and others') statements because they want to hide the truth, which is complete bullshit.

If that is the case I wonder is Microsoft paying Dell for this?

It effectively pretends, the fan still runs as it is almost like this little shortcut I once had many years on the quicklaunch menu to simply turn off the display.

Bloody STUPID! idea like that thing with the DCH drivers.

Looks like LTSC 1809 will be my last one as I can't tolerate this nonsense.

Set false illusion by giving the option of going into sleep and saying it does? which is not what it is going to do but stays on in the bag.
Drains and causes battery wear and possible overheating in the bag where.
Not in control of my own stuff where they end up damaging it.


Anyone came across this issue?
What do you think?

[Nominal Animal]

It is not a Dell or Microsoft issue, it is a much wider cultural stance in information technology.  Even open source gnome and freedesktop projects do the same, removing user options, because they simply believe they know better than the users what the users actually need and should be able to do.

I suspect it has to do with the concept of who should be in control of how the tech is used.  Even in open source there are projects and lots of people who want to "carve out" a volume they "own", being the absolute rulers of, to the highly aggressive exclusion of any competitors or even co-operation with others.  (And no, I'm not talking about the Linux kernel.  They co-operate well with for example BSD developers, often dual-licensing drivers and kernel contributions, so that they can be utilized in BSD kernels as-is.)

Unfortunately, I have no solutions to offer to this.  I myself either accept this, or carefully avoid these situations, depending on their impact on myself.

[garrettm]

So I had a Lenovo Kaby Lake laptop that supported both S0ix ("modern standby") and S3 (suspend to ram). When using Windows 10, and playing music in the background, the laptop would go to "sleep" and continue playing music... Like WTF Microsoft, does anyone actually test this shit in the engineering/QA department? Anyways, going though the same settings as you mentioned, I could enable S3 and actually go to "sleep" in Windows. But... this broke the WiFi card, which disappeared upon waking.

Fast-forward to my new Lenovo Tigerlake laptop, and S3 completely is broken in both Windows and Linux. I can only use S0ix. I have since changed over fully to Linux, but sleep on this new laptop is a bit fickle. I have to disable the "embedded controller" (acpi.ec_no_wakeup=1) or it will rapidly drain the battery when powered "off" and disable PCIe memory mapping (pci=nommconf ) to make my Lenovo Thunderbolt 4 dock work after waking from standby.

Honestly, S3 was so much more reliable than S0ix. Intel insists that S0ix saves power and wakes faster. But what is a few milliseconds compared to broken ass FW not actually working with "modern standby"? And the power drain difference between S3 and S0ix is likely negligible for most situations--enough so that S0ix is pointless to use in the first place. It would be a different story if the FW of peripherals like Thunderbolt docks, external GPUs and such would actually wake correctly using it, but I've had shit luck on that front. (The same dock worked flawlessly with the old laptop using S3 for standby.)

[garrettm]

I think most of the issues with "modern standby" are due to the "embedded controller" doing stupid shit like waking up every 5 seconds to check for network access and other pointless "features" that simply kill battery life. Then there are weird edge cases like when a laptop is put into standby while charging before disconnecting the power cord. This can cause the laptop to draw significantly more power while "sleeping" and literally cook itself if placed into an enclosed space like a backpack. Again, I don't think anyone who designed these "features" actually tested them in real environments with real people doing real people things. It might work fine on a lab bench under very specific conditions, but take it out of that limited environment and the whole thing falls a part. Microsoft, Intel, and all the laptop vendors clearly can't pull their heads from out their corporate assholes to see how badly they've broken the one feature people expect to work on a modern laptop.

[Nominal Animal]

I think most of the issues with "modern standby" are due to the "embedded controller" doing stupid shit like waking up every 5 seconds to check for network access and other pointless "features" that simply kill battery life.

Yep.  In Linux, this means that with these stupid devices, you need to hook into the sleep triggers, and at minimum, unload and reload the kernel driver upon wakeup.  Even some touchpad drivers need this, because they don't wakeup correctly (with the vendor Windows drivers doing some nonstandard crap at wakeup.) Sometimes you even have to unload the driver prior to sleep; the alx module is one example.

Good thing is that these "we know better how to use your device than you do, user" people have not yet managed to stick their mitts this deep yet, so someone with sufficient knowledge can fix these issues –– but only as long as the hardware is actually capable of it, and disabling it in BIOS/EFI/ACPI tables is pretty shitty thing to do.

[SiliconWizard]

Windows also more or less now hibernates by default when you "shut it down", if I got it right (but it's such a mess that it may have changed), so that the next power on is not actually a full reboot.
Also allegedly to remove any "friction" as the new buzzword says.

I also lost count of Windows users who had Windows decide it should forcibly update itself right when the user's ready to leave work and shut down Windows - update taking ages, the user losing it and force-powering off the PC to be able to leave. Next reboot fails and requires a reinstall. Apparently, everyone's happy with all this and keeps asking for more. Who are we to discuss that?

I don't use Windows anymore.

[magic]

It sounds like Windows got worse than systemd.

[MrMobodies]

It seems to be working at the moment and other times it don't. I only noticed it was going into S3 when watching the event log for events.

I noticed it happening when the fan suddenly changes from max on manual mode to bios in tpfancontrol where I can feel it start getting hot so that could be some Lenovo service I installed.

If it worked in a way where it results in, no heat given out, the fan stops, power consumption is brought down to as before and I can see it then I wouldn't care less but this seems to be working against me with overheating and couldn't be good for battery.

I wonder if Microsoft are working on a mechanism to control it remotely via the firmware so once connected up they can run certain things in sleep and wake up the machine as they please where they couldn't do it with S3.

The last thing I had like this was a Lenovo W700 where sometimes on sleep, I'd think it'd be going into sleep where I put it in the bag but it'd just hang, fans would eventually go to max, it'd get hot and the battery will drain. I found it doing that one day sleep on the desk and it wouldn't wake up, just fans up at max hot air coming out. I removed sleep option for a while but I discovered one day that it was the Quadro drivers at the time causing that to happen.

[MrMobodies]

It started doing it again like before intermittently but found this time only when the power cable is plugged in.

When I restarted then it seemed to go in sleep with the power apply but intermittently happened again later pretending to sleep.


https://blag.nullteilerfrei.de/2019/03/05/stop-entering-away-mode/
Thanks to this article:

STOP ENTERING AWAY MODE
rattle technology 2019-03-05
I have finally solved an annoying problem with my Windows 10 setup which was sortof hard to Google, so I am sharing. For quite some time, the computer had refused to go to sleep when it was not running on battery. Instead of going to sleep when instructed to, it would simply turn off the screen and mute the volume while continuing to actually not sleep. Moving the mouse a tiny bit would swiftly end the charade. In a recent fit of rage I decided to inspect the event log, and behold, there were some Kernel Power events that said:

The system is entering Away Mode.

Which is entirely not what I wanted when I told it to go to sleep. However, there was no option anywhere in the power settings to be found that turned off this "Away Mode". Well, the option actually does exist, but for some reason it is not visible unless you set the Attributes value to 2 in the following, easily memorable registry key:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\238C9FA8-0AAD-41ED-83F4-97BE242C8F20\25DFA149-5DD1-4736-B5AB-E8A37B5B8187
Armed with this registry tweak, you can go back to the "advanced" power settings, aka:

rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL PowerCfg.cpl @0,/editplan:
Navigate to Sleep and there should be an option that says Allow Away Mode Policy or something similar. And that policy should be set to no, not even when plugged in, never, just sleep, for crying out loud, why does this even exist.

So some overzealous person at Microsoft had been putting in processes to start this stupid thing.

I am not sure if this is connected to Modern Standby or in addition to but pleased to stop this nonsense. It reminds me of adaptive brightness where they'd be different things doing it and sometimes hidden in the power savings settings of the graphics drivers.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/device-experiences/modern-standby

Modern Standby is available for both Windows 10 desktop and Windows 10X. The number of systems supporting Modern Standby rather than S3 is increasing over time. The Modern Standby section outlines important changes, partner requirements, and best practices for enabling Modern Standby.

Rather THAN? What's WRONG in addition with? It is only increasing like that but not naturally because they are DEMANDING manufacturer's do it.

Switching between S3 and Modern Standby cannot be done by changing a setting in the BIOS. Switching the power model is not supported in Windows without a complete OS re-install.

LIARS!

XPS 15-9570, BIOS 1.3.0, sleep mode gone?
okwei August 8th, 2018 09:00

I just bought my XPS 15-9570 with BIOS 1.2.2 installed, and I updated it to BIOS 1.3.0. I realized that the "sleep mode" option is now gone. I need to set this to "Force S3" sleep to prevent the laptop from waking up randomly, or don't go to sleep properly. So can I do that in the new BIOS?

They ordered Dell to remove the option but Dell offers an earlier bios downgrade.

robert p's Operator December 11th, 2018 03:00
Dell has decided to support the "Modern Standby" from our partner Microsoft. If you decide you wish to use S3 instead of Modern Standby, you can attempt to install an older BIOS, but Dell cannot assist in this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/11jer7z/modern_standby_fixed_after_changing_sleep_state/

Modern standby fixed after changing sleep state from windows to linux

Discussion / Information
I'm noticing that the modern standby feature is disabled and is switched to the standard s3 in windows 11 once I change the sleep state from windows to linux in bios setting. Is this the right way to do this since many people claimed that modern standby can't be changed in windows 11?

I'm just glad that I can finally get linux suspend feature to work properly while at the same time fixing the modern standby issue on windows. But is this the right way on ThinkPad? let me know your thoughts

Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie!
So it isn't that, there isn't a setting that could turn it off, when they ordered manufacturer's like Dell to remove the setting and others just disguise it under some compatibility setting where one setting stops it working. They made it LOOK like it can't be switched off when it can hence pretence.

Windows 10 Modern Standby (Modern Standby) expands the Windows 8.1 Connected Standby power model. Connected Standby, and consequently Modern Standby, enable an instant on / instant off user experience, similar to smartphone power models. Just like the phone, the S0 low power idle model enables the system to stay connected to the network while in a low power mode.

No that could be done already by simply closing the lid. It is not a friggin phone this is a friggin laptop a large one with a great big display, heatsink and fan on it with large power requirements and will never compete with a phone for battery life.

Although Modern Standby enables an instant on/off user experience  like Connected Standby, *Modern Standby is more inclusive than the Windows 8.1 Connected Standby power model.** Modern Standby allows for market segments previously limited to the Traditional Sleep (S3) power model to take advantage of the low power idle model. Example systems include systems based on rotational media and hybrid media (for example, SSD + HDD or SSHD) and/or a NIC that doesn’t support all of the prior requirements for Connected Standby.

Bullshit... * It just turns the screen like before where you'd close the lid.
** By just turning the screen off and lowering a few power states but still on.

Functional Overview of Modern Standby
Modern Standby session encompasses the entire screen-off to screen-on user scenario.  However, individual screen off and sleep segments make up an overall Modern Standby session. These states differentiate periods of quiescing software behavior from periods of long term low power. *For this reason, Microsoft conceputalizes  modern sleep as equivalent to traditional S3 sleep, ** with the added benefit of allowing value-added software  activities to run periodically.

*So they look upon it as "equivalent"
It is not the same thing and will never be equivalent with the fan going in the bag and it producing heat.
** I'd be that'd be the stupid netframe "apps" in the appstore and promotion stuff they install behind their backs along with the updates.

In Windows 10, low power is achieved by only waking from the lowest power state when absolutely necessary and only allowing software to execute in short, controlled bursts of activity, dramatically reducing the opportunities for software components to execute. Windows and the SoC hardware are always listening for interesting events (such as a network packet or user input at a keyboard) and will wake up instantly when needed. The system will wake when there is real time action required, such as for OS maintenance or when a user wakes the system.

Modern Standby consists of multiple hardware and software power modes, all of which occur with the screen turned off. The complexity of Modern Standby is a result of keeping the system alive to process background tasks, while ensuring that the system stays quiet enough to achieve long battery life.

Entry to Modern Standby
Modern Standby starts when the user causes the system to enter sleep (e.g user pressing the power button, closing the lid, idling out, or selecting Sleep from the power button in the Windows Start menu). On entry to Modern Standby, apps and system software must be made ready for the transition to low-power operation. (See Prepare software for Modern Standby.) After software components and apps have been prepared for low-power operation, hardware components, including their software device drivers, must be similarly prepared for low-power operation. (See Prepare hardware for Modern Standby.) Both software and hardware must be made ready for low-power operation.

Activity during Modern Standby
On-demand transitions to active mode can occur in response to user inputs, interrupts from networking devices and other hardware events. Windows transitions the SoC from active mode to idle mode after all software activity is stopped and the devices on and off the SoC have entered low-power states. (See Transitioning between active and idle states.)

The networking and communications devices automatically transition between active and low-power modes based on the software activity of the system during Modern Standby. When there are no system services or Microsoft Store app background tasks that require the network, the networking device is in the low-power, protocol offload, and WoL patterns mode. When a system service or background task requires network access, Windows automatically transitions the networking device to an active mode.

On occasion, the system stays in the active mode (with the screen off) for a longer interval of time. These longer active intervals occur for a variety of reasons, for example, processing incoming email or downloading critical Windows updates. Windows components that are allowed to leave the SoC in the active power state are called activators because they are registered with the power manager as capable of blocking the transition back to the idle power mode. The durations of these activities vary widely but are controlled to extend battery life. The durations of the activities can be viewed with the built-in SleepStudy software tool or through Event Tracing for Windows (ETW)-based instrumentation.

On Windows 8.1 Connected Standby systems, during Modern Standby, Windows transitions the SoC from idle mode to active mode a minimum of every 30 seconds to perform kernel maintenance tasks. This maintenance activity is extremely brief in duration (typically no more than a few hundred milliseconds) and cannot be adjusted. This does not happen on Windows 10 Modern Standby systems.

Resume from Modern Standby
When the user causes the system to resume from standby, e.g. presses the power button, the display is immediately turned on and networking devices are restored to their normal, active operating modes. The time from the power button press to the display turning on is less than one second. After the display is turned on and the networking device returns to normal operating mode, desktop applications resume and the system returns to its normal, screen-on active behavior.

Sleep means sleep.... it doesn't mean to pretend to sleep, the fan going around, producing heat and wasting battery life as if it was on. Until it could do those things and maybe cap tasks to run at power levels the same as S3 then maybe it is a gimmick as above it just turns the screen off and goes to lower power state with some fancy modern pretty trendy name "Modern standby" applied to it.

Even if they do get it to work properly with lower power levels I'd still want it to SLEEP and do absolutely NOTHING behind my back when it put it in "SLEEP". Maybe they should make an additional mode called "STANDBY" as well for this sort of thing where I'd know the screen is just off.

So rather than develop this "concept" properly over time they make it artificial and PRETEND it can't be stopped or reverted back to S3 on existing gear whilst demanding manufacturers to go along with them, remove options and delude the user that t is be design and there is no option where there was and can still be off via other means effectively deluding the user with something it already does with the lid down set in low power mode.
Bloody STUPID!

When they say Support" sounds to me like "forcing upon"
Microsoft not developing stuff like this to work properly but by pretence with a gimmicky name.

Buzzword bullshit: Modern Standby, consequently, user experience, smart phones, inclusive, market segment, Microsoft Store app, conceputalizes, equivalence.

[SteveThackery]

How about hibernate? Might be more suited to your needs, although I can't find it on my W11 laptop.

[MrMobodies]

How about hibernate? Might be more suited to your needs, although I can't find it on my W11 laptop.

No it's working now as it should. When I select "Sleep" it now goes into sleep.

This time it turned out to be AWAY MODE with no setting and nothing specified in registry.

For what I am doing I don't need the hibernate.

If they listed this Modern standby maybe "Standby" on the shutdown menu items in addition to "Sleep" then that'd be a lot better:


If the user decides to put it in a bag knowing it'd be some time then sleep.

If they know they going to take it around an office all day then the modern standby "just turn screen off" and reduce power levels to the lowest it can go whilst running some background tasks might be useful as a starting point and work from there rather than forcing it upon for everything and everybody and then lying that additional modes don't exist.