If you’re like most people, you probably use a lot of apps and services on your computer. But sometimes, you might want to disable an app from going into sleep mode so that it can stay active and available when you need it. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Open the Start menu and type “cmd” (without the quotes) into the search bar.
  2. Type “netstat -a” into the command prompt and press Enter.
  3. If there is a line that says “PID_SUSPENDED=5”, then the app has gone into sleep mode and will not be able to be awakened by your computer again until PID_SUSPENDED is lowered to 0 or the app is restarted. If there is no line that says “PID_SUSPENDED=5”, then the app has gone into sleep mode and will not be able to be awakened by your computer again until PID_SUSPENDED is lowered to 1 or the app is restarted with –disable-sleep-mode=1 . If PID_SUSPENDED==1, then your computer will try to wake up the app but it may not work because it has been in sleep mode for too long. If PID_SUSPENDED==0, then your computer will not try to wake up the app even if it has been in sleep mode for too long.
  4. To lower PID_SUSPENDED, type “setpid –pid-suspended=”. For example, if pid=“1000” was set as pid-suspended=“1001”, then “setpid –pid-suspended=1001” would lower pid-suspended from 1000 to 1001.

Have you ever expected your PC to go into sleep mode only to come back and find it is still powered on? We know we certainly have, here’s how to check what’s keeping it awake.

How to See Which App is Blocking Your PC from Going into Sleep Mode

Press the Win + X keyboard combination or right click in the bottom left hand corner of your screen to bring up the Windows Tools Menu, then launch an admin command prompt.

When the command prompt opens, type the following command:

You can see from the screenshot above, that I have 1 Process (VLC Media Player) as well as 2 Drivers that are preventing my PC from going to sleep. That’s all there is to it.