Windows 8 does not go to sleep - how to identify the device/app preventing sleep

Question

Hello,
I have a quite new Windows 8 Pro installation upgraded from Windows 7, but as a clean install. It is running on a Asus K53E laptop bought almost a year ago but I ran into a problem with going to standby mode. The laptop successfully dims the display and
then turns it off at the set time but it never reaches the sleep mode.
I followed the steps from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976877 but to no avail. The command
Powercfg - devicequery wake_armed shows only keyboard and mouse but I don't suspect the mouse as it is Microsoft Wireless Mouse and I turn it off before trying to induce sleep. I have made sure to turn off iTunes media sharing and Windows Media
Player Network Sharing service. The drivers are from Microsoft or the newest I could get from Asus.
The command
Powercfg -energy showed some errors - mostly with USB devices/hubs and with one of the system drivers:
System Availability Requests:System Required Request
The device or driver has made a request to prevent the system from automatically entering sleep.
Driver Name
\FileSystem\srvnet
I rather suspect some incompatible driver but to press Asus support for some update I would need to know what to blame. I reviewed system logs in Event Viewer but can't find any useful entries around the time when the computer should go to sleep, but there
are so many logs that I might have missed the right one. So my question is if somebody could introduce me to a tool that would help to pinpoint the problem.
I see the subject is quite ubiquitous for Windows 7 so I would be grateful to anyone who could suggest any options other than mentioned above.
Thanks in advance,
Chris

Answer 1

Hi luke, I tried your script. However, it seems that once in a while srvnet crashes during the restart. Can you help me on this? Chris
Hi Chris
Not sure why that would be but - you could add some error-checking logic to the script to test whether srvnet has successfully started, and then if it hasn't - attempt to restart it again. I haven't tested this code because I haven't had that issue, but something
along the lines of:
@echo off
set logfile="%TMP%\srvlog.txt"
if exist %logfile% goto begin
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] logfile created>%logfile%
:begin
echo -->>%logfile%
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] srvnet check triggered>>%logfile%
openfiles /Query 2>NUL | FIND /C "INFO: No shared open files found" >NUL
if errorlevel 1 goto yes_opens
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] no open files, proceeding to check for srvnet driver block>>%logfile%
powercfg -requests | find /C "[DRIVER] \FileSystem\srvnet" >NUL
if errorlevel 1 goto no_srvnet_block
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] **block detected, restarting srv**>>%logfile%
net stop /y srv >NUL 2>NUL
ping -n 5 -w 1000 127.0.0.1>NUL
sc query srv | find "RUNNING" >NUL 2>&1
if errorlevel 1 goto SrvNotRunning
goto :eof
:SrvNotRunning
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] **srv did not autostart, attempting manual start**>>%logfile%
set cnt=0
:wait1
if %cnt% GEQ 5 goto SrvCantStart
set /A cnt+=1
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] **waiting for SRV service to start [%cnt%]**>>%logfile%
sc start srv >NUL 2>&1
ping -n 2 -w 1000 127.0.0.1>NUL
sc query srv | find "RUNNING" >NUL 2>&1
if errorlevel 1 goto wait1
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] **SRV service is now running**>>%logfile%
goto :eof
:SrvCantStart
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] **Tried 5 times to start SRV but failed**>>%logfile%
goto :eof
:yes_opens
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] open files detected, not restarting srv>>%logfile%
goto :eof
:no_srvnet_block
echo [%date:~4,10% %time%] no srvnet block detected, not restarting srv>>%logfile%
goto :eof
Let me know if that works better for you!