Why does Windows 11 actually shut down right away all day long?
Why does Windows 11 actually shut down right away all day long?
I recently built my own desktop setup: the 13600K on an MSI MAG Z790 motherboard with Windows 11 Pro and a 3080 graphics card. The whole thing is about one month old, and the GPU was installed maybe just a week ago. What's going on? I run this computer all day long, twenty-four hours straight, never letting it sleep. I also set my monitor to turn off after five minutes of being idle. This works fine during the day when I'm home or streaming from Plex while away even right before bed. But every morning, the system goes dead instantly. Moving the mouse or typing does nothing; the screen stays black and doesn't detect the operating system, yet the power button is glowing, the Nvidia logo lights up, and fans keep spinning. To get it running again, I have to hit the physical power button to reboot.
I'm pretty sure there are three possible problems: (a) Windows Update messed something up because I signed up for the Insiders Program back when I installed it, so they're giving me beta updates now. (b) Nvidia drivers might be causing the issue. Or maybe my MSI BIOS isn't handling power states like C-states correctly because I'm overclocked but didn't change that setting intentionally.
I'm not going to reset Windows just yet. There is a middle step of creating a restore point, but if this feels familiar to anyone and can be fixed by changing one setting, I'd prefer doing that instead.
It's when the computer goes into a deep rest mode called Sleep or Hibernate. The software that tries to control this feature is completely broken and makes more computers crash instead of working right. Usually, after about three or four hours without using it in sleep mode, the system crashes. I don't really get why this happens, but if you look at all the online posts about this, almost everyone has the same problem: the Windows Sleep and Hibernate state is broken.
Another computer maker said to turn off sleep mode, especially on Windows machines, because it breaks things. My HP Omen 30L stayed in sleep or the screen didn't come back after a big update in March 2023. After I changed the BIOS and tested twice, it seems okay now, but this might help too.
I think the issue was mostly related to the "System unattended sleep timeout." After I changed that hidden setting to zero, it no longer happens when my monitor turns on. Basically, I turned off the sleep function because using power options doesn't actually work like that. But there is another part of the problem: it still reboots every night. I believe this is caused by "Security Intelligence Update for Microsoft Defender Antivirus." I guess I get all these updates because I am a Windows Insider and have chosen to automatically receive them, as well as automatic updates for Defender definitions each night. I thought there used to be an option in old versions of Windows where you could manually install all updates, but on Win 11 it seems you either choose to do this automatically after installing, or you pick a dormant window for your desktop—but that still reboots the system either way. I am going to turn off "automatic updates for other Microsoft products" and see if that fixes the second part of the problem.
Long story short: after I got rid of everything else, the real issue was just the overclocking. I went back to the stock settings and have been running since, never shutting down again. It wakes up when it sleeps without any problems. It feels weird that it only broke when left on all night, but in any case, I won't try to overclock anymore. Having 14 cores now is more than enough compared to the 4-core system I used before.