Windows XP 'forgets' power settings

  • Thread starter Thread starter Richard Melville
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Richard Melville

I have run WinXP (SP3) for several years and the one thing that has been a
constant annoyance is that the power settings (to shut down the monitor and
disk drives) do not persist more than a couple of days and often will not
stay more than a couple of hours.

It is a desk top machine (Dell XPS-400) and on the Power Options Properties
I set it to "Home/Office Desk" and set Turn off Monitor to "After 15 mins"
and Turn off hard disks to "After 30 Mins". System Standby and Hibernate are
set to "Never".

Each time I "Apply" and "OK" these settings they will work as they should
for some period of time, but they never persist for more than a few days.
When I go back to the Power Options Properties screen, all of the settings
are still displayed as they were, but they are not actually working.
Apparently, something in the registry is getting changed, but I don't know
why.

I can't really put my finger on any particular activity that triggers the
settings to be ignored, but web browsing might be a factor.

Is there a way to make these settings stay in place permanently until
changed by me?
 
Yousef --

Thanks for the quick reply. I will try to use POWERCFG method.

I have no other users on any of my computers, so that can't be it.
 
Monitor and disk power cannot turn off till the computer is idle for the
total time set.
I suspect you have a virus program or update program running which would
reset
the timer for the monitor shutdown. You can monitor by displaying task
manager
or set the time for a minute or two to see if it always shuts down.
 
I really do know how the shut down features work.

I have no virus, unless it is a trick virus that ONLY causes the shutdown
times to fail

I can set the shutdown for any number of minutes and it ALWAYS works for a
time or two and sometimes for several days. The problem is that the settings
will not work for more than a few days at the most, sometimes failing in
less than a day. I believe that the settings should work forever unless I
change them.

One other thing I notice is that Microsoft Updates almost always cause the
shutdown times to be ignored.

Notice also, as I posted, the shutdown times displayed in the Power Options
menu NEVER change. They just don't work. Each time this happens (the not
working part) I simply reset them to the same values and they will work for
a while.
 
What virus programs do you run?
Richard Melville said:
I really do know how the shut down features work.

I have no virus, unless it is a trick virus that ONLY causes the shutdown
times to fail

I can set the shutdown for any number of minutes and it ALWAYS works for a
time or two and sometimes for several days. The problem is that the
settings will not work for more than a few days at the most, sometimes
failing in less than a day. I believe that the settings should work
forever unless I change them.

One other thing I notice is that Microsoft Updates almost always cause the
shutdown times to be ignored.

Notice also, as I posted, the shutdown times displayed in the Power
Options menu NEVER change. They just don't work. Each time this happens
(the not working part) I simply reset them to the same values and they
will work for a while.
Click to expand...
 
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