Changing PC sleep setting under Windows 10

The default settings for powering off the monitor and PC under Microsoft Windows 10 are to turn off the screen after 10 minutes with no keyboard nor mouse activity when the system is plugged into a power outlet and to put the system to sleep when plugged in after 30 minutes of no keyboard nor mouse activity. You can view and modify the settings by right-clicking on the desktop in an area unoccupied by any shortcut and selecting Display Settings, then clicking on Power & Sleep.

Power and Sleep settings for Windows 10

You can change the settings from this window. Alternatively, you can change the sleep setting for the PC from a command line interface by opening a command prompt window, which you can do by hitting the Windows key and the "X" key simultaneously and selecting Command Prompt. At the command prompt, you can use the powercfg command to adjust the settings. The syntax for adjusting the sleep, aka "standby" setting is powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac value where value is the new timeout period you wish to set. The number you provide will be the number of minutes the system will wait before putting itself to sleep if no keyboard nor mouse activity has been observed. If you wish to configure the system so that it never goes to sleep, you can set the value to zero as shown below:

C:\Users\nina>powercfg /change standby-timeout-ac 0

C:\Users\nell>

If you set the value to zero and then check the setting through the graphical user interface (GUI) method, you would then see "Never" displayed for the sleep setting. Note: if you have the Power & sleep settings displayed at the time you make a change at the command prompt, you should close the window and reopen it to see the change or back up to a prior window and then click on Power & sleep again to see the change.

Sleep setting of never for Windows 10

To change the setting for the screen, see Altering sleep timeout for the display on a Windows 10 system.

 

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