Windows 10 wont lock on sleep or power off

[Twentyfour7]

Hello Pistonheads
My father had Windows 10 uploaded approx 1 year ago. He tells me it was set so If left idle after about 10mins it would go to sleep and lock and after about 30mins completely power off.
He said for the last few days he has noticed that his PC no longer does this as although the screen may go black after a while of sitting idle as soon as you move the mouse the PC opens up again to where it was left, leaving it completely insecure
Please can you help?
1. Would you know why this has happened please?
2. How can I fix it , so it goes back to how it was before?
I have googled the issue and I can see some people have had opposite problem where PC just keeps locking .
I would be grateful for any advice please.
I have checked the control settings and can’t see any changes made and we have checked and run security scan and can’t see anything untoward
My Dad rarely downloads anything, he Is a silver surfer and so gets anxious about downloading or making changes
Would be very grateful for any advice and explanations so I can pass this on to my Dad who would also be very appreciative
Many thanks
24/7

[king arthur]

Mine is doing this too but it's intermittant. Started doing it after some update a while ago so I assume it's another bug.

[Racing Sparrow]

The system has probably defaulted to 'Never' in the Power and sleep section of the settings menu.

Navigate to Settings > System > Power & sleep - Change the dropdown boxes to what you require.

[2fast748]

My PC does this intermittently, it usually preceeds a big update coming down. Check what version it is (1809, 1909, 20H2, etc) and how it is setup to receive updates.

[Twentyfour7]

Thank you for your replies.

It is Windows 10 version 2004 , last features update installed on 11/8/20 , last quality update 16/10/20, last driver update 21/10/20 , last definition update 30/10/20

My Dad does not have the windows Smile feature

Unfortunately it has not defaulted to never , it was set to sleep at 30 mins and power off at 10mins, however this morning we have now changed it to 10mins for both sleep and power off. It goes to sleep after 10 mins but does not lock , i.e. require a password and it does not power off either. What is going on? Pretty hopeless from a security perspective....

Thanks for any other thoughts

[Dracoro]

Why not set screensaver to turn on after 9m and require password to unlock.

Regardless of Windows issues with turning off or not, this may resolve the security issue side of things.

If in doubt, when leaving PC click Windows-L to lock it.

[Dagnir]

And a password on wake up is 100% applied?

[snuffy]

I'm not trying to be a smart arse, but assuming your Father's PC is in his own house, you say it's not secure because it does not lock if he leaves it for x minutes; well, what threat are you trying to protect it against?

[snuffy]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Exactly !

It needs to be set in 3 places; from my PC, mine is set to never (because it's located in my house), however, check these:

[Nimby]

I had a similar problem which turned out to be the PSU. I guess age or some other fault meant it couldn't provide stable voltages at the low current needed for the various sleep modes so the PC wouldn't sleep properly. I swapped it for a new one and no issues since.

There is the powercfg command that might reveal what's preventing sleep/hibernation.

[Twentyfour7]

Hello everyone
Thanks very much for your replies, been really helpful in managing the security side of things. My Dad has a number of people come to the house and I think having a password protected PC gives a sense of security. As I am a Windows 7 user still , your advice on Windows 10 has been great

Dracoro, I activated screensaver and set it to 9 mins as you suggested and this is working well , I also taught my Dad how to lock with Windows +L , however I was unable to find how to activate Password on wake up as Dagnir suggested. Before this was set as my Dad said always on powering on he would have to enter a password but after the change in the system (?bug) it opens without a password

Referring to the screenshots Snuffy has kindly sent , the first , "require sign in" has always been set to "when PC wakes up from sleep" and has never been set / defaulted to "never"

Under "power & sleep" both screen and sleep have been set to 10 mins each but when have applied do not require us to enter a password on activating PC again , the screensaver when activated is now the only thing that requires a password
Nimby, it's not that the Pc won't go into sleep mode it's just that after it powered off it was no longer requiring a password on reopening. When it went to sleep I think a password was not set and I cant see how to activate this
He has not used a USB device as far as I am aware

[snuffy]

Another thing to try then:

Type netplwiz in the search box.

This will pop up:



Is the check box checked ?

[Twentyfour7]

I will take a look at this Snuffy when I am next at my father's in a couple of weeks , should it be checked? Thanks

[snuffy]

Twentyfour7 said:

I will take a look at this Snuffy when I am next at my father's in a couple of weeks , should it be checked? Thanks

Yes, that box should be checked. Mine's not as I don't want to enter a password when my machine starts up/wakes up.