Modern Standby - Scheduled Tasks

Try3 said:

I've been able to write about S0 Modern standby without any effing & blinding and I even managed to use the word curse just once.

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I'm proud of you Denis. A paragon of virtue these days.

So today, Monday, I called Dell. My machine supports the change from S0 to S3. The tech convinced me to just set sleep to never and use S0. Changed in power options and action to take when lid closes.

This was Denis's idea, set sleep to never, two days ago.

I still think the standard needs some work or the software developers need some new way of thinking about task initiation. I'm sure there is a way if people wanted to resolve this they could.

I'm going to give it a try, that is S0, no sleep.

Try3 said:

S0 is not a sleep state but an idle condition.

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S0 neither is a sleep state nor is an idle condition. S0 is the working state. See:

Here is a very old (yet still also very informative IMO nevertheless...) article page that discusses the S0ix, or System Idle States:

It is up to the user to verify and decide on whether the battery power consumption during Modern Standby is acceptable─and remains acceptable after changes are made, e.g., through Windows updates, driver updtates, toying with the various settings that can be directly/indirectly related to the behavior/characteristics and/or changing what background activities you have running on the system that could potentially affect the whole universe also in addition to whatever it was that they never actually wanted to tell you about. Good luck, and, above all else, have fun. You're going to need fun. lol

Post #2 includes a link to some sample S0 Modern standby power consumption test results.
S0 Modern standby consumed no more power than a comparable computer in S3 Sleep did.

Denis

Tell it to those ppl whose laptop's battery was fully charged when they put the laptop in their backpack and then half a day later when they took it out it was scaldingly hot with the battery gone almost completely flat.

Try reading the results before objecting to them.

Denis

hdmi said:

S0 neither is a sleep state nor is an idle condition. S0 is the working state. See:

System Power States - Windows drivers

System Power States

learn.microsoft.com

System Working State S0 - Windows drivers

System Working State S0

learn.microsoft.com

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Thanks for the clarification. What ever they call it there own language in the power options calls it sleep. Maybe they should update and call it "Low power state".

More things that should just be in the imaginary standard.

Try3 said:

Try reading the results before objecting to them.

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I'm not objecting to them. I'm only saying you should tell it to those ppl who experienced something extremely very different from what you have shown here.

Caledon Ken said:

Thanks for the clarification.

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And he was quite right.
In that post, that discussion of S0 Modern standby, in which the term S0 Modern standby was used over a dozen times, there were two instances in which I incorrectly wrote S0 instead of writing the full term S0 modern standby.
I have gone back through the whole thread and corrected all such errors.

Thank you, hdmi.

Denis

Caledon Ken said:

Thanks for the clarification. What ever they call it there own language in the power options calls it sleep. Maybe they should update and call it "Low power state".

More things that should just be in the imaginary standard.

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Well actually the powercfg a command does call it Standby (S0 Low Power Idle). But anyway. It wouldn't be the first time that Modern Standby suddenly starts acting up on you for no apparent reason you can pinpoint immediately I mean, even if it turns out that it does work for you what guarantee do you have that it won't easily begin to flurb? I suggest that you read up on how much trouble the feature has been causing for a lot of laptop users who got told over and over and over that nothing is wrong with it and that those who disagree must all be suffering from mass delusion. THEN decide whether it's worth the risk including time and effort spent on trying to experiment and evaluate. Sorry, but it is what it is.

I decided to post in this old thread since the existing subject better matches my goal, which is to deal with this unfortunate new technology being rammed down our throats with (years later) apparently no letup in letting the consumer decide, and actually make the broken functionality of scheduled tasks work while *not* disabling sleep and turning off the display or attempting to disable S0 modern standby.

Feel free if somebody wants to move this to some other discussion.

I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle waking up to the modern day and not liking what he sees. Up until this month I'd been running Windows 10 on a 2015 Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 3 happy as a clam. Unfortunately that machine finally died and I had to buy a new one.

All things considered, today, I think Microsoft, Intel and PC manufacturers have lost their way and I will be looking at Apple for my next serious Digital Audio Workstation system since all I hear in that space from pros is how terrible the latest PC hardware and software is to build and use such a system and how great the Mac Studios are. Do I want to trade my new Lenovo X1 for a Macbook? Not yet I guess......

Based on this thread and the more recently updated Disable Modern Standby in Windows 10 and Windows 11 I think I've come up with a hack way to leave sleep and 'turn off the display; power options enabled and also have a scheduled task run. In my case I really only care about making my usual 3am Macrium Refect backup work again. This hack seems to work ok for rousing/stirring a machine in an S0 idle state during which a scheduled task such as a 3am backup would otherwise not execute.

I discovered a remote desktop login to the S0 machine in idle state will roust/stir it back to a working state. So, if this happens just before a scheduled task that task will execute. Stupid? Check. Requires another machine with a scheduled rdp task to make it work? Check. Could quite possibly also be done with a remotely executed PowerShell script that does something else besides actually login, like request a list of running services or something? Quite possibly. The catch there is implementing saved credentials to authenticate to the target machine isn't as easy as using a stored .rdp file. I guess I could create a task on one machine using credentials that have rights needed to connect and/or do something on the target S0 machine. This makes the scheduler responsible for securely storing the credentials.

If there's something better I'm all ears but have already ruled out windows reg tweaks to attempt to disable S0 on a machine with no such support in the bios as well as workarounds like setting sleep to 'never' and/or 'turn of the display' to never.

My new Lenovo X1 Carbon 12 Gen the current rev bios has no S0, S3 or any other related settings to enable/disable although I know previous bios revisions did. It seems Lenovo have given up trying to make this option available to customers for whatever reason. A previous bios revision had feature to allow scheduling a daily power on which I thought might be the answer before realizing probably not since we know an S0 machine in the idle state is already on. Anyway they took that feature away in the next bios revision before I could even test it.

I tested using the Windows Clock alarm feature mentioned in the other thread but it did not rouse/stir my machine from it's S0 idle state.

Again, maybe there is something simple that will, I'd love to know.

What worked for me was running the below PowerShell command on another machine targeting the S0 idle machine, sometime before the scheduled task needed to run.

Start-Process "$env:windir\system32\mstsc.exe" -ArgumentList "$env:userprofile\Documents\RDP-Name.rdp"

RDP-Name.rdp needs to have the password credentials saved on the machine where rdp is being executed.

Per this other helpful post in the other thread I also tested using Wise Auto Shutdown to schedule a log off sometime after which seemed to work, with the caveat that I've not yet confirmed the machine would eventually return to entering an S0 idle state but I can't really see why it wouldn't. I guess I'll find out tonight. I'll follow up if there's any interest.

I know when I tried setting sleep to never I noticed the fan was running in the morning, apparently long ago reported. This was with bios the machine shipped with this month so I guess there was never really a fix from Lenovo for that. Either way, I'm personally not excited by the idea of setting sleep to never and would rather use my hack.

Maybe somebody else will too.

After exploring all this I definitely want to follow up with Macrium to see if there's any talk of a solution. I know I wouldn't buy the next release without one. We know there's a native way for software to operate with a machine in an S0 idle state. The question is, does anyone yet actually know exactly what that native way is and/or is there in fact an API yet?

@dabl,

I think that I can help, at least I hope that I can .

Before I put together a much longer response, let me ask a couple questions to make sure I'm on track here.

1) Just to make sure that I understand the scenario, I'm restating you goal briefly. If I got anything wrong, please correct me.

My understanding is that you have your laptop in S0 standby state and that you wish for it to "wake" fully at a specific time so that it can run your Macrium Reflect backup, correct? Currently, the only thing that seems to work is to RDP to that laptop from another machine which will bring that laptop out of S0.

2) During this time, could you tell me whether the laptop lid is open or closed?

3) Other than Macrium Reflect itself, have you tried to create a separate scheduled task in Task Scheduler to see if that will stir the computer to life? If you have tried this but it didn't work, could you provide the settings that you have used?

I too have a Lenovo Laptop with Modern Standby, so I'll do some testing on that machine. I have other machines that I wake automatically to do Macrium Reflect backups, but have not tried it on this particular laptop. Once I get your response I will try it with that laptop.

hsehestedt said:

@dabl,

I think that I can help, at least I hope that I can .

Before I put together a much longer response, let me ask a couple questions to make sure I'm on track here.

1) Just to make sure that I understand the scenario, I'm restating you goal briefly. If I got anything wrong, please correct me.

My understanding is that you have your laptop in S0 standby state and that you wish for it to "wake" fully at a specific time so that it can run your Macrium Reflect backup, correct? Currently, the only thing that seems to work is to RDP to that laptop from another machine which will bring that laptop out of S0.

2) During this time, could you tell me whether the laptop lid is open or closed?

3) Other than Macrium Reflect itself, have you tried to create a separate scheduled task in Task Scheduler to see if that will stir the computer to life? If you have tried this but it didn't work, could you provide the settings that you have used?

I too have a Lenovo Laptop with Modern Standby, so I'll do some testing on that machine. I have other machines that I wake automatically to do Macrium Reflect backups, but have not tried it on this particular laptop. Once I get your response I will try it with that laptop.

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Howdy @hsehestedt and thanks for the reply and kind offer to help!

Yes, I think we're on the same page with my issue.

My laptop lid is closed and attached to a dock. I am only trying to make a scheduled 3am macrium backup run when the machine is docked with the lid closed. I have Windows 11 Pro power options for 'Plugged in' set to 'Turn off the display' after 30 minutes and 'Put the computer to sleep' after 1 hour. The 'When I close the lid' setting for 'Plugged in' is set to 'Do nothing'

I have not tried to create a separate scheduled task in Task Scheduler because I'm confident after reading the entire aforementioned thread that cannot work. I'd love for you to prove me wrong though. If you are somehow able to create a scheduled task in windows task scheduler that brings your Lenovo out of S0 idle state I'd be amazed. I just checked and can see the version of Macrium I'm using uses the windows task scheduler. It created the job pictured. I hadn't checked that before but also see it indicates the 'operation completed successfully'. This doesn't mean much since, yes, it did complete successfully, but NOT at 3am, unattended, bringing the machine out of it's S0 idle state. Instead, it simply 'completed successfully' the next time I physically touched the machine which brought it out of S0 idle and the Macrium backup only then attempted to run and complete which I let it do. Also notice the 'Wake the computer to run this task' is set, which, because of the nature of S0 idle, has zero affect since the computer is NOT asleep.

Yes, my previous Lenovo X1 Gen 3 machine which used traditional S3 sleep with the same settings as above worked fine waking up and executing the scheduled macrium backup using the same version of Macrium Reflect.



This makes me think that Microsoft could solve this so easily by simply making 'Wake the computer to run this task' also bring a modern standby machine in an S0 idle state out of lowest power and back to a working state since they clearly know how to do it.......

First, I just want to thank you for the amount of excellent detail you are providing. You are making the issue so clear that even I can fully understand it .

Okay, time for testing on my part. Let's see if I can get lucky!

Bear with me - I'm not where I can get my hands on my laptop right now, so I've have to begin my testing later this evening. Give me until tomorrow morning. Hope that is okay.

But so far, I have to admit that the behavior you are seeing does indeed sound rather stupid. You would think that it should be able to work precisely as you expect.

In the meantime, just one question, more out of curiosity...

Is there a reason why you are using Modern Standby in the evening rather than shutting the system down or placing it into hibernation? Please don't misunderstand, I'm just curious and ask only because that scenario might be "easier". Also, just for me personally, I usually use modern standby anytime I plan to use the computer within the next few hours, but at the end of the day I shutdown.

dabl said:

Either way, I'm personally not excited by the idea of setting sleep to never

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Why not? AFAIK setting it to never is still the only way to avoid troubles. When the screen turns off, that's when the computer enters a Modern Standby session, and, this should happen regardless of whether sleep was set to never. According to the first link in post #2, setting sleep to never and modifying your script that your scheduled task runs could be a solution that works. This modification makes the script simulate a keystroke so as to end the Modern Standby session before the backup task is started.

If the fact that it ends the Modern Standby session is a concern to you, then you could always decide to add another modification to your script, i.e. to make the computer enter another Modern Standby session after the backup job finishes. Again, this is possible by making your script wait for completion of the backup before the script proceeds with turning the screen off, like so: Add "Turn off display" Context Menu in Windows 11 Tutorial

@dabl,

I have some partial results, although I still have more testing to do tomorrow (Sunday).

First, my test subject, the only machine that I have with Modern Standby, is a Lenovo Thinkbook 13x Gen 2 with a 12th Gen Intel i7.

In my testing, I was unable to get a scheduled task to wake the system or bring it out of Modern Standby when I place the system in Modern Standby or when shutting it down fully. This was true whether I was running on battery or AC power. However, if I would place the system in hibernation, then it would wake just fine and execute the scheduled task both on battery and AC power.

Note that all this testing was done with the lid open, tomorrow I will test with lid closed.

Again, more testing and research to take place tomorrow, but in the meantime, a couple of thoughts:

1) This first item is pure speculation on my part at this point: I know that people have been extremely vocal about problems with Modern Standby. In fact, Linus of Linus Tech Tips did an entire video on the topic. One of the main complaints is that a user closes the lid of the laptop and it enters Modern Standby, as expected. However, a day or two later the user grabs the laptop only to find out that the battery is depleted just when they really need it because the system came out of Modern Standby and stayed there at some point in time. Another common complaint was that they pull the laptop out of a bag only to find that the system had fully woken and is running super hot due to the confined space it is in.

I wonder if either Microsoft or the laptop manufacturers or both have purposely made a decision to limit what can wake the system in this mode. Maybe this is a recent change in the behavior?

What I can tell you for sure is this: I purchased my system new almost exactly one year ago to the day, so it's a fairly current system. I have used Modern Standby almost daily but it has NEVER ever woken up fully on me while in that mode at least when the lid is closed. However, when the lid is open, the system is clearly still active to some extent because all I need to do is bring my face anywhere near the laptop and the camera and Time of Flight Sensor will detect me and turn on the screen and log me on. Likewise, the fingerprint reader will bring the system back to fully active and log me on if I touch it. But it simply will not wake to run a task.

Is this all expected behavior? I don't yet have enough information to say.

2) You had noted that you were able to use RDP to wake the system. Can I make an alternative suggestion that may work for you? Actually, let me restate that: It may work as an alternative to RDP, but may not be everything you want. How about WOL (Wake On LAN)? I use Wake On LAN extensively with several of my systems and it works great. Yes, this requires either my phone or another computer to send a WOL signal to those systems, but it works great. However, this is another one of those mixed bags. I have some systems that will respond to WOL when shutdown or in hibernation or sleep. Some other work only in sleep or hibernation, but not when shutdown.

The bad news is that I cannot test this on my Lenovo. My Lenovo has WiFi only, no Ethernet. If I want Ethernet, I have to plug in a USB Ethernet adapter which won't work with WOL. Since this is my only system with Modern Standby, I cannot tell you if WOL will wake a system in that state.

So, that is where I stand at the moment. I will respond back again when I have finished further testing and research.

hsehestedt said:

The bad news is that I cannot test this on my Lenovo. My Lenovo has WiFi only, no Ethernet. If I want Ethernet, I have to plug in a USB Ethernet adapter which won't work with WOL. Since this is my only system with Modern Standby, I cannot tell you if WOL will wake a system in that state.

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Isn't the WiFi card that is inside the Lenovo Thinkbook 13x Gen2 an Intel AX201 card? These cards from Intel all have the WoWLAN feature. You just have to make sure that wake on pattern matching is enabled under the Advanced. Also under the Advanced, you might need to enable offload GTK rekeying, as the CPU won't be able to handle the GTK rekeying event while it is in DRIPS mode, but if you offload this handling of that event [off of the CPU, onto the network processor that is a part of the actual card itself], then the card still should be. At least, that's the theory. I haven't toyed with WoWLAN in years, though. But anyway. The USB ethernet adapter I have does work with WOL. It uses the Realtek RTL8153 chip. As you know, there is a separate download section on Realtek official website where you can find the latest driver for their USB Ethernet chips. (Separate, i.e., this download section is a different section than that of their PCIe Ethernet chips.) Normally it should work.

But like I said in my previous reply to this thread, the solution/link from post #2 seems to me like it offers the clear advantage of not having to rely on WOL and/or WoWLAN to still be able to get the job done nicely after all. If it works, then I guess that it still kind of depends on whether it also works with the lid closed. (And, if it pans out that it does not, on how important it is for you to keep the lid closed...)

dabl said:

I have Windows 11 Pro power options for ... 'Put the computer to sleep' after 1 hour.

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That's the problem. That puts S0 Modern standby into one of its later phases during which Task scheduler cannot initiate user tasks.

dabl said:

If you are somehow able to create a scheduled task in windows task scheduler that brings your Lenovo out of S0 idle state I'd be amazed.

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I'm able to do so.
I discovered the method a year ago and posted it in this forum [See my next para, which is based on my post #2 which HDMI mentioned above.].
I have used the method on three different S0 Modern standby computers from three different manufacturers [Chuwi, HP, Lenovo].

dabl said:

If there's something better I'm all ears

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Try3 said:

I have found that setting Power options to Sleep after - Never avoids the [Task scheduler] problem in S0 Modern standby computers.
- I never put my S0 Modern standby computers to "sleep", which merely affects S0 Modern standby entering one of its later phases.
- It is the Power options, Display off after setting that initiates S0 Modern standby. The computer enters S0 Modern standby when the display goes off and this has nothing to do with the Sleep after setting.
So I can use Task scheduler to run tasks.
Running scripts during S0 Modern standby - my post #86 - ElevenForum

This might also be of interest - Power consumption in sleep - my post #85 - ElevenForum

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My 'running scripts' post includes the batch file containing the commands that I use to rouse an S0 Modern standby computer into the state that allows tasks to run, such as your backup task.
- This script runs on the S0 Modern standby computer alone. It does not need any other computer to help it.
I know you do not want to use this method but it's the only one I have found.

dabl said:

I know when I tried setting sleep to never I noticed the fan was running in the morning

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I wonder if you were leaving your display on with your computer in S0 [the running state] and that was why the fans were on.
By allowing the display to go off [hence S0 Modern standby to start], I never find my fans running in S0 Modern standby. Because there is heat generated during S0 Modern standby, I never put my computers into a confined space unless I have done a full shutdown or sometimes when hibernating.
You can look in Event viewer to see power state changes such as S0 Modern standby. You can import the Event viewer, Custom view definition I use - see Importing EV, CV - my post #23 - ElevenForum

And you might also find this of interest.

Try3 said:

There have been a range of experiences with disabling S0 Modern standby.
Disable Modern Standby in Windows 10 and Windows 11 - ElevenForumTutorials
The procedure for disabling it is very straightforward and is normally readily reversible but in one case I found that I had to restore my prior system image to reverse the change..
- Some people have found that disabling S0 Modern standby enabled S3 Sleep. They have then been able to carry on as happy as Larry.
- In one of my cases, S3 Sleep remained disabled afterwards so I carried on having to use hibernation. Several other people have reported the same.
- In one of my cases, disabling S0 Modern standby was reported, by the PowerCfg -a command, to have enabled S3 Sleep.
- - But, if I tried using S3 Sleep, the computer became totally unresponsive. I could not do anything to be able to use it again.
- - I recall that it also had difficulty reading its own disk or carrying out some commands even before trying out S3 Sleep. But my notes about this aspect of the problem were not clear.
- - I could not even power it off [until, as I discovered, I disconnected then reconnected external power].
- - I recovered the computer by booting to my system image boot disk and restoring the computer to its state before I had disabled S0 Modern standby.

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All the best,
Denis

dabl said:

We know there's a native way for software to operate with a machine in an S0 idle state.

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I agree.
That's why, for example, Windows update & MS email apps can run during S0 Modern standby.

dabl said:

The question is, does anyone yet actually know exactly what that native way is and/or is there in fact an API yet?

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I have never seen any list of these favoured apps and for any method of adding my own choices to the favoured list.

hsehestedt said:

However, when the lid is open, the system is clearly still active to some extent because all I need to do is bring my face anywhere near the laptop and the camera and Time of Flight Sensor will detect me and turn on the screen and log me on. Likewise, the fingerprint reader will bring the system back to fully active and log me on if I touch it.

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Hannes,
I agree.
Windows allows MS's favoured jobs to keep running during S0 Modern standby.


All the best,
Denis