Why does Windows10 keep changing my power settings

Hi, Stu,

Are up receiving Updated Builds of Windows 10? If yes, the Builds have default settings.

Every time I receive a new build I have to change settings again.

1. Settings > System > Power & Sleep
Check Battery Power settings > these are to save Battery Usage

2. Check Save Energy and Battery Power settings

Hi Stu,

Sometimes Microsoft's built in Fast Startup feature can interfere with these settings.

Which version of Windows 10 is currently installed? See how to verify:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wik...

What is the exact make and model?

Open Start, type: system information
Hit Enter
Click System summary
Look in the right pane

Copy the system sku info into reply here.

See example: https://imgur.com/qzektpA

Disable Fast Startup, then try again.

Press Windows key + X
Click Power options
Click Additional power settings under Related settings
Click Choose what the power button does
Click Change settings that are currently unavailable
Uncheck 'Turn on fast startup (recommended)

Click Save changes.

Click Restart now and see if it works.

If the problem persists

Sometimes your computers firmware, which deals with things like power management, which is related to sleep needs to be updated. Remember, the issue you are experiencing here is outside of Windows, where its not resuming from sleep. Windows is in a saved state on the hard disk and can't manage the hardware resources, thats left up to Firmware (your BIOS) to handle. So, its obvious this more a hardware issue than software, but updated driver software can fix it.
Another possible issue is, you are using an "intelligent" power adaptor with a master socket in which the computer is plugged in triggering sleep.

It could suggest you need to update your chipset drivers and BIOS.
I recommend you update the most critical ones: BIOS, Chipset, Display Driver, Network adapters.

Hi Stu:

Has anyone really answered this question yet?  Have you found a working solution that sticks?

I have had similar experience, for some time. 

Windows 10 Pro, version 1809 build 17763.253, Dell XPS 8930 Desktop, 16 GB, 2TB, blah blah  blah...

Ever since starting up this new Dell machine, (sort of new - got it in Dec 2017, finally had time to get it going now - December 2018), I go through the power settings and set it to never go to sleep etc., again and again.  I have things I want the computer to do, (monitor and respond, backups, etc.), in the middle of the night, and it has to be running to do them.  And when an alarm or other monitored item comes it, I want to see it NOW, not when the monitor wakes up.

Every time I think everything is set up correctly, it works for a bit, then, in a few hours, days or whatever, it  starts going to sleep, dropping network connections, and so forth.  I go back and find it has decided to change back to its own balanced "mode" not the one I told it to follow.  I reset things, and walk away, and then find it not the way I left it in a few hours or day, or sometimes even minutes.

This was particularly egregious when I was trying to get another new Windows 10 Dell computer to do backups in 2016 - the encrypted USB drive in question kept being powered down by the OS, and the drive required manual keypad entry of a long password every time it lost power, before it could be reconnected.  A 2 hour backup was simply impossible.  At the time someone designed a registry patch that kept the power to the specific drive up.  That and various work arounds allowed me to keep it going until the job was over.  I thought this problem would have been corrected almost three years later, but no, it is still an issue, and seems worse now than before. 

The only conclusion I can come to is that MS is deliberately designing the OS software to their definition of "minimize power usage", regardless of customer wants or needs.  Perhaps it is Dell, but MS has made so many other deliberate changes that ignore the needs of many customers, that this just seems to fit in.  It seems MS is spending more time trying to prevent their customers from configuring their equipment the way they, (the customers), need it, than they are fixing security vulnerabilities.  I doubt that this is true, but it really feels like it to me.

I expect the other responses to your post are well intended, and may work for some others, but they certainly haven't worked for me; nor have any other suggestions I have found related to this problem, in many other posts on the subject, as yet.

I would say your idea of visiting the dumpster is the best solution, but many of us have too much invested in software, etc., to take that route.  And I have suffered through a number of Apple problems with my iPhones as well; maybe someday we will wake up and everything will work reliably, but probably not in my lifetime.

I hope you found a registry patch or some other way of making your power and other configuration settings stick.

Thanks for your post; it is good to know we are not alone, (wow, starting to sound like the X-Files),

Bob

Bob, 

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING!  I have been keeping a log of of everything I have installed and tye computer behavior since setting it up just in case something wonky would happen.  Since December 4, 2019 this is whats been going on in my PC:

1) There is no set pattern for when this happens.  It can happen every couple days, or the computer can run for a week.  

2) It doesn't necessarily happen between shut down and start up (meaning you shut the PC down with your power settings, amd it reboots with the setting changed.)

3) The computer can be idle for a half hour, or four, and the settings change while you are away from the computer, say eating a meal, watching TV, etc.

4) There are only the two of us in the house, so some teen or child isn't slinking into the office and resetting the power settings.

5) You can have the "Hi-Performance" and a "Custom 1" power setting as the two power settings, leaving balanced power, power saver, etc. in the lower "other power settings" section (that you can hide), but upon bringing the PC out of hibernation, POWER SAVING has jumped to the top two selections, forcing one of the previous two settings into the "other" list, and Hibernation is always set to one minute.

6) It can happen after a Windows, or Office update, or not.

7) I have been on the phone with Dell, and they can find nothing wrong with the settings.

8) Game mode is off.

9) Setting ALL of the power settings (custom, power saving, high performance, customs, etc.) to "Never" on the hibernation and monitor settings have no effect on stopping this.

10) Going into the advanced settings, and either setting any toggles for hibernation to off, has no effect on stopping the behavior.

11) Going into advance settings and changing the monitor settings to 60-3,999 minutes between shut off has no effect.

12) Happens with no screen saver, or a screen saver set to run after X number of minutes.

13) If the computer set to update after, say 11pm, to do an update, or a back up, Windows will still go into hibernation.  So the PC isn't seeing that there is a pending job or update to run.

14) With regard to Dell, they have even offered to send me a fully clean SSD with The New PC image on it.  But this happening to you as well is telling me that won't change anything.

One question, do you have an up market NVIDA video card in your PC?  Microcenter had Dell build a shipment of these, normally they just come with the integrated video from the mother board.

I guess what I am trying to do is clear out as many variables as I can.

Hi Andre,

I am continuing to research this, because I am pretty certain, after looking around these forums, that they problem isn't unique to the manufacturer. 

Computer is a Dell XPS, 16 gig

Windows 10 professional

Ver. 1809

OS Build 17763.195 (installed 12/8/18)

ALL my drivers were updated last week, but this has happened from day one, and even after the drivers were updated.

While your suggestion to disable fast start up, etc. is attemptable,  that this doesn't happen just on rebooting. 

The computer can be on and in use for two hours, I step away for dinner and family time, then come back to update some stuff, and the computer has fallen back into hibernate, the Hibernate setting is 1 minute.  And NO ONE has stepped near the computer. 

My thinking is that there is a Key in the operating system that is mis-set in some way. 

Looking through other questions in the forum, I am seeing Dell, Asus, etc. all having this issue, and it not just a desk top issue, either. 

There is something in Windows10 that is causing this.  We need to find what it is and get a standardized fix for it. 

Hi Stu:

This thread, and your last post brought up a number of great points worth checking.  And evoked some comments /thoughts I have about my other Dell machines.

1) Response to your last question:  The Dell desktop in question, a Dell XPS 8930, has two video "adapters", near as I can tell.  There is an Intel UHD Graphics 630, somewhere - I'm speculating it is on the mother board, although I'm not sure.  There are three video connectors on the mother board, and none are currently connected.  There is also a Graphics Card, and I assume it is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, which is connected, via a cable, to my ancient monitor.  So yes, it has a separate NVIDA card.  Just looked over my system logging and noted further aggravation - last night it was running on "Bob's High Performance Mode", but this AM it started dropping Internet connections every 3 to 4 minutes, and when I looked just now, the Power Mode was back on "Power Savings".  MS, please leave my settings alone!

2) Another cut at the data - information, suggested by your comments above.  Our office has 3 Dell Precision Laptops - a 5510 and two M4800s.  All are running Windows 10 Pro.  None of them have this particular problem, (going to sleep and/or video turning off/shutting down, or video configuration and power settings changing without my direction).  With or without docking stations, driving either the internal displays, or driving multiple external displays, they work fine.  In all cases performance is OK.  Although I haven't tested each one rigorously, I have been using them since 2016, and sometime in late 2016 or early 2017, they finally became stable.  Knock on wood.  Don't know how long they will stay that way.  Those machines are all "business class" machines.  Our Dell XPS 8930 desktop is a "home" class machine.  Could it be that Dell and MS have an agreement not to push some configuration requirements so hard on the "business class" equipment?

In every case, the Precision laptops started out going to sleep, shutting down, and monitors going off, as configured from the factory.  After changing the power settings, they all gave up this behavior, and worked continuously, as I intended.  They are still doing so, after updating to Windows 10 Pro, Version 1809, a month or two ago.  The only question is how long will they keep doing it as I intend?  Note that in these cases, minor changes and updates did not reset the configuration, but in significant feature updates (Windows Versions 1709, 1803, and 1809), I needed to do at least some "reconfiguration" to get things back to the way I want them to run.  Most obvious is the need to reconfigure the system to use my preferred "screen saver", and requiring re-entry of password, after it takes over.  I could go on railing about why MS Windows changes something that was important enough for me to set the way I wanted, but at least I could set it, and it doesn't revert at every small update, or overnight, or even more frequently, by itself.

3) As mentioned in my prior post, I have plenty of other issues, which I believe are mostly associated with the MS Windows and or the Windows 10 operating system.  Even Windows 7 updates still have problems, (like last Wednesday's security updates KB 44080970, which broke my small office network for two key Windows 7 machines).  But at least on our older windows 10 equipment, with older hardware, they have been functioning without the power saving function shutting down my displays and computer.  So far.

4) Recalling the problem I had keeping the encrypted drives running, (I had to go through a series of steps to get it to stay powered and run continuously, so it didn't disconnect and require manual touch pad re-entry of the lengthy password every minute or two, when not in actual use), I thought of another "fix" which is unlikely to help in the issue we are discussing, but it seems worth mentioning.  You have probably already done something like this.  I went to Device Manager, and went through all USB related devices, including the USB drives, and examined their properties.  I found a number of the USB Mass Storage Devices and USB Hubs had "Power Management" tabs, under "properties", which have a checkbox that says "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".  I needed to uncheck all of those checkboxes to get my external USB drives to run continuously and support nigh time backups.  I looked at the information for my system and there are no devices for the displays (adapters or monitors) that have "Power Management" tabs, so I don't think you would have this kind of setting problem, but you never know.  These settings are an example of those which need to be reset after every major update, on all my systems,  at least for me, so far.

Hope this info helps.

Happy Friday,

Bob

Bob, I should have an answer for you tomorrow.  Hang in there!

Bob, question.  Could the drivers for the viedo card be changing the power settings?

again, I am trying to rule EVERYTHING out.

Right now we have focusing on MS, and or the manufacture of the machine.  I think we are onto something.

OK, here's what I have been able to find out.

The people at Microcenter were no help.  They essentially said that "Windows going to do what Windows are going to do>" and "Typical Windows black hole."

Yet the fix that most advisors are throwing out there is all the basic stuff (update you bios, yada, yada, yada) that doesn't solve the problem, but they can at least say "Hey, I did something." because they have no other tricks up their sleeves. 

EVERYONE seems to agree that since it happens across brands that:

1) It could be Windows

2) It could be Intel

3) It could be something else.

I am going through Windows Event logger looking for something on the dates that the settings flopped over to Energy Saver looking for something.

The other thing is that I am seeing is that a fresh new install of Windows, instead of updated install that they were pushing in 2016, seems to show more of a propensity to push this into a effect.

One thing that I have done is to bring up that Power Saver mode, click into its settings, and then look at each attribute and change anything that looks like it impacts what happens in that state.