Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Troubleshooting Sleep Mode Problems

If you use Windows 7 for some time, you may realize that your computer will suddenly wake up from sleep mode, or that the battery of your notebook computer drains very quickly. The possible causes of these symptoms are many and are often difficult to troubleshoot.

Windows 7 includes a very useful tool to troubleshoot potential problems with your computer that may cause unexpected drain on the battery of your notebook. It can also troubleshoot areas that cause problems with sleep modes, and display the different power saving modes supported by your computer. To launch this tool, launch the command window in Administrator mode (type cmd.exe in the Start menu, right-click the cmd.exe item, and select "Run as administrator").

Then, type the following command:

powercfg -energy

You can also use the powercfg tool to turn off hibernation (you need to run the command as an Administrator):

powercfg -h off

The Power Policy Configuration tool will take a while to complete; when it is done, you will see the information displayed as follows:

    C:\Windows\system32>powercfg -energy
    Enabling tracing for 60 seconds...
    Observing system behavior...
    Analyzing trace data...
    Analysis complete.

    Energy efficiency problems were found.

    9 Errors
    14 Warnings
    10 Informational

    See C:\Windows\system32\energy-report.html for more details.

The report generated is named energy-report.html and is saved in your current working directory. You can navigate to the folder and use IE8 to view its content.

Note: Instead of navigating to the destination folder to view the report, you can issue the following command in the command window to launch the report directly:

start energy-report.html

You need to run this from the command window from which you ran powercfg; otherwise, you may not be in the correct directory.